I chose 'Floors, Walls and Ceilings' as it seemed outside of what I have done before. I worried that 'Altered Faces' and 'Body Posture' would lead me to the same themes I covered in Component One. I have been interested in space and boundaries yet not focusing on specifically the floors, walls and ceilings. i felt the containment would make for interesting subject subject matter.
Before the box
i am most interested in the presentation of my work and of the appropriation of others' as I believe a curator's voice can be heard in exhibitions specifically as they may be the artist or have a connection with the artist and their work. For me this artist is my grandfather who has tens of thousands of images stored in dozens of boxes completely inaccessible to me. My 'box' as i have come to call it is a physicalisation of the idea that my process can be contained into one space that is a studio space and gallery as well as a place to perform in order to understand him as a man and an artist.
I first researched these artists as they show a broad approach to the question of "Floors, Walls and Ceilings' as well as documenting and archiving the lives of people.
I first researched these artists as they show a broad approach to the question of "Floors, Walls and Ceilings' as well as documenting and archiving the lives of people.
Michael Wolf
To me Wolf's work symbolises pressure in cities, whether that be the density of the buildings, the close ups of stressed strangers or the sweaty cramped trains backlit by blue depressing lighting. In his Google Maps work the pixilated images make it clear that these people's privacy has been invaded but their full emotion is hidden by the digitalisation of their faces. The subway photos are the saddest to me as the condensation is a physical representation of human lives being not only contained in the space but being forced out through the glass.
Wolf's work made me think of density and commodification of labour even amongst the middle classes. This is worst seen in Japan's 'salary men'. The photos in the video below are both hypocritical and shallow in their understanding of these men as a photographer has sold images of them when they were vulnerable, further exploiting them.
Joanna Piotrowska
What I like about these images is the distance from the subject. Unlike other suggested artists, Piotrowska focuses on the external walls. As many of the structures below use draping fabrics. this amplifies the idea that they are whimsical and childlike, which makes Piotrowska seem like an observing adult, not allowed in the dream world. the people inside these structures are not interacting with their space.
John Divola
To me these images explore the private space becoming public and for artists as Divola graffities and decorates abandoned houses in a ritualistic manner. The use of abandoned houses mean that the images represent people Divola has never met yet as the layers of paint come off the walls their expression is in the images adding texture and colour. The third image is the most beautiful to me as the vibrant colours make the image seem edited and dreamlike. The blue paint on the ceiling matches the sky in a way that makes the room seem both a part of the sky and the house. The light Divola uses reflects off these spots in a way that creates light beams again bringing the outside through. in my work in the box i tried not to decorate the box but instead perform naturally as i became more interested in telling my grandfathers story and attempting to understand his hoarding.
Cortis & Sonderegger - The red room recreation
William Eggleston's 'The red ceiling' has been described as having a "some indefinable sense of menace" due to its use of dye transfer printing in 1973 marking the beginning of modern colour photography. Cortis &Sonderegger, most known for their recreation of the Hindenburg crash and fall of the Twin Towers, recreated the iconic image by recreating the room it was originally taken in. This work began my thoughts on appropriation of others' work. Cortis & Sonderegger investigated the use of dye transfer but used modern printing despite the fact Eggleston said the colours in the image was "so powerful that, in fact, I've never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction". the recreation is often shown as above with their studio space visible. This is when I came up with the idea of the box being a studio space as well as an exhibition space.
Masahisa Fukase
Fukase documented the impact left on the city by its inhabitants through cracks in the pavement that he then printed the bromide prints with fluid drawings in brightly coloured inks tracing the ideas of the artist,. putting his print on a subject made not by him but by his community, again brings me to the idea of archiving a moment in time with every image having an exact location and time as if the the ink splotches are representative of his feeling at the time, an idea i became interested in during component 1 researching Alfred Stieglitz series 'Equivalents'. The images use tone dramatically to make the cracks seem deeper and the colours fit more naturally. The lines created seem like an artist highlighting sporadically what he sees as beautiful, leaving his marks as a creative.
Victor Burgin - Photopath
Burgin explores floors in the most literal way in his exploration of site specific work which asked questions of his viewers relation with no signage to dictate how they may interact with the piece as it creates a void in the space when as well as it suspend . Photo path is always destroyed after its exhibition.
Conception of the box
Having done this research i began to think about how artists' processes become part of their work. i wanted to find a space to contain my project's development. i brought up a dusty old white box from the art department that has been used by many other students. i began to fill the box with my test prints i made out of an old medium format negative I found.
I wanted to also fill the box with actions after learning about Cindy Sherman in Component 1.
This was an unsuccessful experiment as there was no substance, there was no connection to the actions and the concept of archival that I became interested in soon after, however I was drawn to the idea of performance for performance's sake. instead I decided to fill the box with senses, playing an interview with my grandfather and making the box smell like his milky coffee.
The box as an archive
My grandpa is a photographer who believes in keeping everything he makes in ordered fashion as well as equipment he hasn't used in years . As well as art work he stored newspapers for the sake of referencing and anything else he deemed important. My dad thinks this stemmed from him being evacuated in WWII - my dad told me he struggled with food insecurity and since then packed the freezer such that (as he put it) 'you couldn't fit a Rizla in the freezer'.
Archival has come to be known as its own art form as the digitalisation of work creates opportunities to exhibit work in new ways . I wanted to create my own archive after exploring ideas of space in my introduction to 'Floors, Walls, and Ceilings'. the box is a live instillation, where I will work as well as storing all my work; good, bad, experimental or final piece, with both care and disregard.rAre photographers all hoarders?
Archival has come to be known as its own art form as the digitalisation of work creates opportunities to exhibit work in new ways . I wanted to create my own archive after exploring ideas of space in my introduction to 'Floors, Walls, and Ceilings'. the box is a live instillation, where I will work as well as storing all my work; good, bad, experimental or final piece, with both care and disregard.rAre photographers all hoarders?
Kurt Schwitters - Merzbau
Destroyed in a British air raid and reconstructed in 1981 by Peter Bissegger the Merzbau became inspiration to many installation artists . Merz is a nonsense coming from the German word Kommerz (commerce) as Schwitters was a socialist. Merz was then used to describe a subset of Dada art. In his own words, he aimed to find a "totally unique hat fitting only a single head"— his own. The Sprengel Museum in Hannover contains images of the house and letters to and from Schwitters about his life and art. The images taken of the house are mostly by friends of Schwitters, and take a simple approach to the home acknowledging that the house was developing constantly as bits of advertising, scraps of newspaper, wood, garbage, and urban debris.
Eric Kessels - 24hrs in photos
Kessels is an interesting artist to me as his art focuses on appropriating other's work and presenting them in ways that produce distressing examples of how photography exists in the modern world and how it documents life. Kessels explores modern relationships with photography as people upload their personal photos to public websites, many of them being unartistic. He then placed the images in galleries, public spaces and churches. The last image is most interesting as the priest is performing a sermon amongst the images as though they are not there.
The Nazi plunder, the Kunstschutz and the degenerate exhibition
Kunstschutz is the principle of preserving cultural heritage and artworks during armed conflict with the stated aim of protecting the enemy's art and returning after the end of hostilities. However this practice did not extend to Jewish art and culture, which was destroyed in an attempt to destroy the history and culture of the Jewish people. On the 20 March 1939 the Nazis set fire to nearly 4,000 pieces in the courtyard of the Berlin Fire Department. This propaganda act raised the attention they hoped. Many art historians and Swiss museums came to buy the stolen art which was seen by Germans as rubbish. Adolf Ziegler and the Nazi party exhibited 650 pieces of 'degenerate' art in Munich 1937. The work was often unframed and was made up of modernist art and juxtaposed against the Great German art Exhibition made up of traditional romantic art. The exhibitions were a great success with Germans ridiculing the 'socialist' art by artists such as Georg Grosz, Georg Kolbe, Otto Dix and Kurt Schwitters.
Vivian Maier
Maiers work is not connected to my work ands she is not one of my favourite photographers, but her story reminds me of my grandfather as one day I will be able to discover his work when he is not there to prevent me from seeing it. A nanny who lived a fairly average life, Maiers' work was discovered after her death when a case of hers was discovered by Ron Slattery and Randy Prow who archived her work and began to contact galleries. However i don't believe it is her story as she had no choice in the matter. Photos that she had locked away were bought and sold by two people who never knew her. in my project i fear misrepresenting my grandfather - we have vastly different styles and tastes in art and his work has been mainly commercial.
My grandpa sees much of his hoard as an archive of his work. Archiving has since become digital or a process of archiving historical work. This is in many ways an art in itself but also overlooked as simply clerical. Looking at my grandpa's archive I saw what he believes as a dead art - Letraset, 19th century enlargers, magnifiers and more. Now though people see using these and acquiring them as part of the art. I cataloged what my grandpa has used over time and looked at the price of these now, which formed part of my interview with him.
My grandpas archive 'hoarding'
Corinna Kern
Kern documented George Flowers' 4-bed home for over a year, becoming close with him and even staying in the home. The images portray Flowers as grandly dressed in smart shoes, showing that he isn't completely at home but also not ashamed of his home, but like some hoarders, proud of his collection. Kern not only juxtaposes flowers against his background but subverts ideas around hoarders as being trapped in their own homes - instead Flowers revels in his home.
My grandpa was a photographer and photography teacher and over the years he has collected thousands of negatives, prints and magazines. He has two storage facilities filled with them. He gives me books every time I see him and I have begun my own collection. He doesn't look through them but instead like a lot of photographers he doesn't throw a single thing away. This has largely been blamed on him growing up during WWII.
I think this series went well as I was able to capture how my grandpa fills the space and creates a secondary layer of walls of boxes . What is most interesting about this space is the idea that you can't access the boxes as they are stacked on top of each other. Much of the stuff in the space is never accessed by him, yet is catalogued as if it is needed and precious. I prefer the close-up photos of the walls as they fill the frame and are the focus, rather than the focus being all the stuff in the room, there by honouring his archive/hoard .
i printed contact sheets of these photos and put them up in the box using the prints to select my images physically.
I then double printed some of the images to exaggerated the busyness of the images to replicate how I feel in my grandfather's home. these were succesful as much of the colours and shapes combined to create a blur with details only seen when looked at closely. This added to the box as it made the people that came to see it lean in look up and in to the corners where I placed the images. In the box I wrapped the images around wooden beams to further distort the images.
I then double printed some of the images to exaggerated the busyness of the images to replicate how I feel in my grandfather's home. these were succesful as much of the colours and shapes combined to create a blur with details only seen when looked at closely. This added to the box as it made the people that came to see it lean in look up and in to the corners where I placed the images. In the box I wrapped the images around wooden beams to further distort the images.
I also took some film photos of my grandpa's house with a broken film camera. This created risk as the film I put in this camera has often become ruined or double exposed. So instead of doing this to honour a process my grandpa cherishes i did it to fail and fill the box with both good and bad.
I was initially disappointed with these when I scanned them as they were blurry and dark. However when I printed these in the dark room I felt that they were much better than the digitals and as they had a quality about them that reminded me of my grandpa. They seemed confused and blurry - the boxes that are so delicately labelled have no definition or meaning.
Odette England- Damaged negatives
England asked her parents to put the negatives taken in her childhood to their shoes as they walked through the farm she grew up in. Through the exercise England damaged the negative. The prints have an eerie quality of nostalgia, the dents and scratches making the prints look like a memory being pieced together.
I put the negatives on my shoes and walked around the art an photography department leaving scratches on the film. i have studied photography for 5 years now and have made many pieces this walk was an attempt at including them in the piece. I think these went well as they have texture created by my shoes and the floor which add the nostalgia i was looking to create.
i put them up in the box:
i asked my grandpa a few questions yet for most of the interview he explained his career as a typographer a photographer, a teacher and working in advertising
- What was your first camera?
- Who helped you learn how to develop film?
- Can you remember the first photo you took?
- What cameras have you used throughout your career?
- How did you begin typography?
- What genres of photography did you use?
- Why did you like teaching?
- Why did you start teaching?
- Why did you stop using typography?
- What do you think of the resurgence of old practices?
He showed me some of his old work:
OVERPRICED HIPSTER CAMERA – OR INTRINSIC ADDED VALUE OF SELF-IDENTITY
My grandpa has a distain for modern approaches to photography, that anyone can be a photographer and that is a bad thing, that you can take thousands of the same photo with no artistic approach. i found his old equipment on Ebay to see how much it would cost me to take photos like he did when he was a young poor artist. It would take me around £250 without printing and developing costs, this shows how the culture of photography has changed as young artists are priced out of shooting in film.
As the box came together I started to notice the smaller parts of the box that became more interesting as they were layered together. I used a magnifying glass to amplify these lines. In some of the images the magnifying glass is in the centre of the image and the surroundings can be seen.
I wanted to create a space in the box you couldn't reach, much like the boxes that fill the rooms in my grandpa's home. I covered these boxes with cut-outs of my grandpa's old magazines. I then later covered them with my own photos. I put the boxes on the ceiling as well to create an encroaching presence.
I covered the boxes with more prints of the photos of my grandfather's things and rooms making the boxes seem larger and stacked.
I took another series of photos in my grandfathers house with a larger focus on the floors and ceilings. These photos looked out of focus when scanned but weren't on the light box. I think think these photos were much better than the last set as as the focus on my grandpa exploring his space is the focus.
These prints were better as the clearer images gave me a greater chance to use dodging and burning
Taryn Simon - The colour of a flea's eye
On her website Simon presents her work as a book of photos of the New York library's picture collection. Simon calls these collections 'extensive archive of images as the precursor to Internet search engines'. One of the archives is called 'Economic Panics' which suggests to me that these photos are not artistic but documentary in nature. The filing system at the library is described as 'democratic' as an algorithm is created by those who use the resources.
My reaction - formaldehyde cupboard
In the furthest classroom back in the since department tuckeed away behind some stools is a cupboard filled with jars of preserved creatures from before the 70s. This was an interesting subject to explore as it has been used by so many students , like my box, and has been delicately organised and archived. the cupboard is contained by floors walls and ceilings but extravagantly opened by a large top.
I also took photos on film:
In the box - performance
Vito Acconci - Seedbed
Seedbed is Acconci's seminal work due to its vulgarity. Acconci creates an idea of honesty and closeness in this work as the viewers are seen in a perverse manner. The size of the platform adds to its as when people walk on the platform they can assume either distance from him or assume that they are standing directly over him in this state. The three week exhibition consisted of him masturbating for eight hours a day, which led him to a trance-like state of dehydration and exhaustion wriggling around through the wooden beams .
Chris Burden - white light/white heat
While Burdens 'shoot' is synonymous with conceptual art 'white heat/white light' explores ideas of exhibition that I am interested in due to its presence in the gallery. in the 'box' I spend time with friends whilst working, this brings the box into another part of my life blurring the lines of what I am exhibiting, which is what I aimed to do with bringing in my grandfather's work and voice. The white light/white heat photos often show an empty gallery but during the day Burden could be heard and seen from the plinth, bringing his body and life into the work and the space.
Chris Burden - Doomed
Burden lay motionless under a slanted sheet of glass near a clock. Burden planned to remain in that position until a museum employee prioritised his well-being over the artistic integrity of the piece. A few days into the piece Dennis O’Shea began to record the piece saying “It was in the air. No one knew what it was exactly, but that lack of clarity was, in some ways, a part of what made Burden’s piece so exciting.” After 40 hours, the museum staff consulted doctors. 5 hours and 10 minutes after that, a museum employee placed a jug of water by Burden, at which point Burden rose, smashed the glass, and took a hammer to the clock, ending the piece. This image is interesting to me as the glass being slanted means there is an automatic distance created but Burden is not fully contained - someone could crawl under the glass or remove the glass, although nobody did. Ultimately the physical aesthetics of the piece were valued over Burden's health. Ira Licht, the curator of 'Bodyworks' said of Burden's work, “It bears the content and is both subject and means of aesthetic expression.”
Shunk +Kender
In the 60's and 70's it became customary for performance art to have no physical result especially as many artists destroyed their work. it became the job of Shunk and Kender to document them, photographing a subject you are not in control of. Their images are not removed from the subject instead they include audience reactions r larger surroundings making the performance seem surreal rather than separate from our world , you feel as if you are walking by the performance rather than looking at a photo of actors.
Researching Shunk and Kender was how i discovered MOMA's website and their use of a digital archive of artists but most strikingly an archive of curations and work in the arts. this is how i wanted my box to come across as i saw myself in the space exploring my grandfathers work rather than creating my own.
The Tea Party
I asked my friend to pretend to be my grandpa and have coffee with me. i wore an oversized bow as my grandfather wears a bowtie everyday and asked him to wear a thick knit jumper. He has studied clowning so knew about leaning into silliness. By the end of the performance we both felt euphoric . We were speaking loudly and doing things without thought. He drank a coffee out of my shoe, poured coffee on my head and made a coffee in my mouth. I threw instant coffee at him and spat the coffee he made on him.
preparing for the exam
Sophie Calle -Bronx project
Calle went to the Bronx, a predominantly non-white working class borough with high crime rates and asked people where they would like to be photographed. She then exhibited these images with an account of her day in what she saw as a hostile environment. When the work was shown gang members came to the gallery and tagged the images, and when she held the exhibition in other galleries she included the tags , and also included them in her book. The book now sells for £2,500. This collection is interesting to me as it has become known for the artistic expression of the public not Calle herself, yet Calle and art collectors charge thousands and the community sees none of the profits. Aesthetically the images are simple in tone and composition yet are made interesting by the story and the way people who are not typically seen in the arts or to have an interest in art engage and have excitement for the work. This project made me think of how i would exhibit my final piece and the idea of destroying the box especially as I will have to return the box to the school. I also wanted to commit a ritual similar to this destroying art and decorating the floors walls and ceiling of my box.
Steven Pippin-pin hole camera
Pippin's work focuses on class. Pippin made everyday objects into pin hole cameras to take sympathetic images which are "ethico-political orientation of sensitivity, receptivity, or exposure to bodily vulnerability and suffering". Much of Pippin's work focuses on the working class with many of his cameras being made of everyday objects in working class life . This was my goal for my box as i wanted to explore the progression of the box from containing art, to becoming art to making art.
This image didn't work, so in the exam I will place the camera closer to the box to account for the large wide angle.
I used a camera that I knew would create a clear image I thought this was very successful as the image was hazy yet the different parts of the box can be seen.
Exam plan
- make more prints using film and use doge and burning techniques
- experience of being in the box - have people come to the box and explore the space photograph their faces
- fill the box with rubbish collected by the art department
- find filling cabinets
- place lamp and equipment in the box
- make pin hole camera prints
- disguise a pin hole camera as the box and take a picture
- move to box to a more public space
- take everything in the box down file them in folders
- destroy everything that was in the box
- perform a goodbye to studying photography , perhaps a Russian funeral