“A preparation for things to come; between fiction and reality” By Nina Falk
Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were. – Marcel Proust, 1934Background:
Since September 2012, the Contemporary Art theory students at Edinburgh College of Art have been working on an ‘Artist-Run Archive’ (A.R.A) project at two art galleries in Edinburgh; The ‘Embassy’ and ‘Collective’. After splitting the students into two groups, myself and two of my fellow students, were placed at Embassy with the main task to organize records and archive documents from the last ten years of the running of Embassy Gallery. Embassy was founded in 2004 as a ‘non-profit’ making ‘artist-run’ gallery that represents Edinburgh’s creative community. As the gallery is run by a committee of artists and with an elected board whose members are replaced every two years, their archive has a diverse history and multifarious past.
A part of the A.R.A project, was to develop a methodology that would be suitable for Embassy’s material and it’s space. Since none of us have any relationship with Edinburgh or Scotland, and four out of the six students on the course are non British, I instantly thought the idea of going through Embassy’s archive without any knowledge of their past, a bit daunting. The power we held in our hands and how we actually had some sort of unwritten capacity to change both their past and future made me careful about how I went through and treated their material. The responsibility that lies in the hands of an archivist when handling objects that are encoded with both value, space, physical actions and emotional reactions, can make it easy to misread an objects memory and history, or to make a false assumption about the material which could lead to real harm to the past. Materials founded at Embassy’s archive, created a link to its past and offered materials and connections for further research both outside and in the gallery (Merewether, 2006)
During the time in the cold damp room at Embassy, and after months of being a witness to their history, I came across materials that I was more drawn to; the unknown, the un-named and all those documents that had no real place within the archive structure; unknown photographs, birthday invitations, personal letters, handmade objects with scribbles, things that did not seem to have any connections with Embassy’s past. After going through Embassy’s content, we as a group, decided to divide the materials by year, splitting them into ten boxes, one for each year in chronological order. This left us with a problem; what about the materials that could not be dated or named? This led us to create the 11th box. The importance of this box is that it no longer seems to work as a proof of the past, it is full of materials that generate stories; both fact and fiction.
As our task is to exhibit the A.R.A project at Talbot Rice Gallery’s Fair in May 2013, we as a course, had to agree on how we would go about using Embassy and Collective’s archives. As we did not want to exhibit materials from Embassy or Collective’s archives in a third gallery (Talbot Rice), we decided to do something that would inform our ideas of the archive itself. Seven months of investigating the role as archivists, both in theory and practice, led us to the idea of a ‘live-archive’ performance which we named A preparation for things to come. A live-archive could question the role of both the archivist and the archive itself, and work as a thought-provoking platform to the public, Though an archive generally be found upon bookshelves, in boxes, folders and maps, that sit waiting to be discovered as memories and documentation of the past. We wanted to create a fictional present (the now) for the future in the Fair. The idea is to develop an experimental space in which we can perform as archivist and let the audience generate material from the Fair itself. This will hopefully evoke questions regarding reality and fiction, evidence and fallacies, and how we can document the present for the future, as it becomes the past. By making a live mechanical platform, we will hopefully fill the archival scene with answers to our questions that we have generated while working with the archives at Embassy and Collective. This performance at the Fair can work as a place of accumulated objects and a scene of interaction among personal and collective identities in a space between fiction and reality.
I will, through this report, examine the importance of memories and the function of an archive. I will ask questions such as; how easy is it to create, take apart and change a memory? I will share my personal view on the notion of an object and see how it can represent memories of the past. Overall, how will the live- archive at Talbot Rice Gallery be remembered and work as proof of the event when it was created to be fiction?
Between fact and fiction:
An exhibition works as a social environment where people can engage with the space, regardless of the exact nature of the exhibition (Lavine, 1991). The Fair will hopefully provide a cognitive space, aimed to be an insightful interpretation of what the students at ECA have explored. But as each person, according to their own lives and past, engage with different aspects of the archive, the event might become a site for explorations and discoveries, and work as a social interactive experience. An important element in the performance is the visitor and the nature of his/hers engagement with the project. As part of the nature of this social engagement lies with the sharing of the experience of personal and collective memories. Wolfgang Ernst (Ernst, 2004) argues that a “collective memory has developed into an important theoretical construction in recent years after emerging from a social science into a mass psychology and crowd mentality”. What might be “true” for one, cannot and will not, be true for all. Records are reflections of human activity and “gathering” objects can stimulate the imagination and provoke a discussion and increase our ability to question what we know (Lavine, 1991). Another reason for why the Fair might work as a powerful engagement of memories is because of its ‘dreamlike’ landscape where fiction can work as the real and visitors can respond to the objects and the settings of the performance. This space will allow critical thinking and the use of imagination, which can open up feelings and thoughts about the purpose of an archive (Bachelard, 1994, pp 15-19). We have, with the live-archive performance, the possibility to work in an honest but experimental way. Instead of looking at the ‘truth’, we can see it as an open exploration of the archives importance can affect the function of an archive. This might be a healthy process, which can raise as many questions as it might answer, and potentially be intriguing for both us as performers and the public.
A memory can be a bridge between the past and the present or an illusion, an escape from reality rather than a true account of an occurrence in the past (Proust, 2006). An object can remind us of a certain period of time and can work as a time capsule. Objects can be vessels for ideas, memories and feelings and we need these records as proof to show the past and learn about the future. A memory from an event such as the one at the Fair is not just a record, but also a tool in the continuing re-invention of culture. Soon, the archive of our society will consist of a vast database, storing more materials than we might use (Spieker, 2008). I will argue that the re-making of the past is more relevant to our time today, because we seem to connect the present with the recent past, by conserving the evidence from the past in a more ‘consumerised’ way. Nevertheless, we might ask whether people in the future will know more about us today due to our efforts to preserve the cultural record and recorded knowledge. But in what way will this benefit and effect the future, if it will at all? So, what will happen with the material and evidence that we will gather at the Fair, if the audience eagerly will empty their pockets to create the documentation of the present?
When people visit a public space such as the Talbot Rice gallery, they unconsciously bring their life histories and memories with them in their pockets and bags. The content of such memory can have as much to do with social aspect of the visit as with the innovation of the exhibition (McManus, 1993). This makes the creation of the archive potentially powerful, as the unpredictable assemblage of materials and ideas will create a part of the live-archival performance. Moreover, we will at the Fair, aim to recognize the recorded memories through both objects and oral information and provide a place where individuals and groups can share, compare and even confront memories. We will do this with the assumption that the public will provide us with objects for documentation through collecting traced evidence of the Fair, using photography, paper, writing, films and found objects as the primary source of information. This will create some sort of representation of the event itself whether it is fiction or real. It will create a documentation in an archival form as we will construct the traced memories and originate a fictional history by letting this material act as a proof of the event. By doing this, we might need to adapt the way that we normally view materials at Embassy and Collective’s archives.
The material evidence of this exhibition, can be challenging because of its meaning and the way that we approach the material in the performance. Do we treat all the generated material with the same respect, or do we count some of it as inadequate? I will argue that it is difficult for an object to act as record of a historical narrative and at the same time be the subject of the history and memory. These objects that are themselves the subject of a history (the unknown and unnamed) become more intriguing due to the level of mystery that they hold. The lack of information that these objects generate means that they are difficult to engage with. To be able to understand them, we need to build a fictional narrative to help us engage with them. This might be the reason for why I found the 11th box more alluring than the ‘known’ recorded documentation at Embassy. By understanding its social, political and cultural context, it can interplay and manipulate the space and content within the archive. Jean Baudrillard (Baudrillard, 1968) argues that objects have two functions: ”to be put in use and to be possessed”. To me, this account is too simple as I believe that time has the ability to change our personal relationships to objects in different ways. First, I have noticed that something happens to a material object when it becomes part of a history, real or created. Therefore it is no longer just any object, but a thing that holds a memory and now is a part of the owner or the event itself. The created history it is associated with, is now a part of the new memory of that the object.
To keep and preserve the present and the past memories is central to our concept of society and culture and fundamental for our understanding of the world around us. People construct memories to respond to changing circumstances and alter the details according to the setting in which it is recounted (Dierking, 1992). This can allow us to omit, reshape and reorganize memories and these new constructions can sometimes feel so strong that they change the way in which we see the world. We sometimes let objects represent things we want to remember. And in a way, it could be argued, that we can only know of existence through the memories and the objects that we gather: how can we be sure that someone or something has existed if there is no evidence left from it? No memory is absolutely faithful to its past, only re-constructions based on present concerns and purposes (Proust, 2006). By looking at material evidence, such as photography, we can ask ourselves questions about to what extent the photograph is evidence of the truth? Can photographs say anything more about reality than what we can tell from it? And in that case, what does that more consist of? Does a photograph just contain the evidence captured in the image, or has the process of taking the photograph captured something more, than we can see visually? (Farr, 2008)
Fiction, which firstly can belong to fantasy and imagination, can still have a close relationship to reality (Grau, 2004). I will argue that history and fiction, in a sense are often interlinked in the creating of the past. Fiction can even enable us to deal with the real world and provide models of substituted reality that do not always conform to our desires. Unlike history, a fictional memory is not obligated to tell the truth and can therefore express things that we otherwise would keep unsaid and forgotten. This fictional memory can validate our perception of history without being constrained by truth or logic. Moreover, since fiction does not have to keep to a historical and factual truth. Some might say that art is one of the only places where the past can be properly renewed and imagined and can therefore make the past present (Derrida, 2006). My personal aim at the Fair and by performing the ‘Live Archive’, is to see how much we can change, alter and remove from a memory, and if we can even construct or de-construct a memory? The underlying thread is: is an artificial disfiguration and manipulation of a memory now part of our truth?
Ideas and thoughts of the event:
“We remember what we understand; we understand only what we pay attention to; we pay attention to what we want.” - Edward Bolles, 1999
As the Fair and the performance have not yet happened, it is hard to know how it can be read and explored. One might think that an archive holds the truth as memories are constructed and shaped by materials. Archives operate as agents which produce histories that inform and find answers (Osthoff, 2009). Showing the public at the Fair, how easy it is to create a fabricated archive by constructing a fictional history, will create an awareness of the faded foundation of this truth. The materialized surroundings in the world is one of the elements that can link the past with the present in a given space. But how can we, through an object and an archive, be sure that something really happened? In a way, we might only view life by the ‘proof’ of materials and objects. The notion of memory enables us to remember, preserve, and to recall experiences and knowledge (Spieker, 2008). If we reflect on the function of a memory, it lies in the inner life of human experience in general. But which memory can we actually believe in; the memory in our head or the memory through material evidence? Maybe neither?
Associations with some objects, such as the content of the 11th box, can force the viewer to question the limitations of cultural institutions and how they have shaped the understandings of historical truth, artistic importance and the language of display as this can create an alternative history. Depending on its display, the work can indicate a religious, political or cultural meaning as well as having aesthetic and commercial value. This presentation can enhance, change or alter its intentions (Hiller,1994). So how will we see and read the archive at Talbot Rice gallery? Do we see it as a true form of an archive and almost expect it to work as some sort of illusion of the reality within the four white walls? Or is there a possibility that the audience might tend to focus on the deeply rooted ideas that they might of how an archive should be; an archive that holds the truth and works as an informational platform for the facts and reality?
An archivist might occupy a space between the subjectivity and the objectivity, which draws attention to the functionality of an object over its physical form. Therefore highlighting how the function/meaning of the object can differ from its aesthetic presence. For example, even an event poster for the Fair, holds a subjective value for the present as documentation of the event, but also an objective value as a record of the true details of this event. Thirdly, it also stands as a record of the aesthetically trends of the time. When thinking about curating an archive, I find that the content and the subject is more important than the aesthetic side of the material (Lavine, 1991). But I will, at the same time, argue that the aesthetic appeal to an exhibition is always important to the engagement with the work. When you curate a live-archive exhibition, you can look at factors of how the context and narratives changes when you have a clear purpose to how the performance is displayed, and see if the presentation can enhance, change or alter its intentions. But how will we actually go about the aspects of curating an archive? What issues will we face? One aspect that we are focusing on, is that we will create some sort of 9am-5pm working area which will show the significance of the archive that is normally hidden behind closed doors.
Although our memories feel like they always shows the truth, they are extremely vulnerable to manipulation. What proof can we have as documentation of the events truth when we aim to create a fictional representation of an archive? Will the fictional archive distort our memory of what did happen, or is this new reality now part of the truth? How will we view the Fair when there is no longer any witnesses of this event left? Will we view the fictional archive as the truth and the real?
History is not always enough; we need a bit of imagination and fiction for it to come alive. Without evidence, it’s fiction, but evidence can be altered and changed. The fact that we are archiving something that is in the present, and knowing that we are doing so, may affect our choices and will this make the archive unreal and not an honest representation of the past for the future. Can our fictional live-archive later be archived as a performance and what happens with that archive? What will we see as the truth and how will we go about archiving the fictional truth? And what is it that we wish to remember after the Fair? These are some of the questions that cannot yet be answered.
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“A PLACE FOR THE BODY Context, content and the narrative”
Introduction and background:
“A place for the Body is a collection of work from the social network Tumblr that takes the exhibition from the “White Box” and re-stages it on the digital screen. An art space outside the physical museum can encourage critical thoughts and discussions, both on and offline and manipulate what we see by a change of the context and order of the images. To create a narrative and to document a social network in a society without filters can create questions such as “are we consumers of images on a screen?” Art Exhibition Poster
In February 2013, I designed an experimental platform to analyze peoples’ perception and relationship to art and nudity that has been gathered and exhibit online. This involved sending the subject one of three invitations; “Art Exhibition”, “Art blog” and “Art curating”. These three invitations differed in the presentation and title but they all directed to the same webpage (http://aplaceforthebody.tumblr.com/) I wanted to investigate whether the labeling of the invitation, would influence the reading of the images and if the narrative would change when viewing nudity online. This experiment started as a response to my own difficulties to perceive what I saw when I viewed art on social networks such as Tumblr. Tumblr’s newsfeed shows a stream of content such as art, current trends, nudity, news, fashion and pornography. It is a mass explosion of social, political and religious content that, for me, could not be read or defined and became problematic to view as separate figures, as each image interlinks and creates a new narrative with those around it. What happen to art and nudity online when the lines between the different contexts are already blurred and debated?
As the perception of art online, can be altered by factors such as; audiences’ physical location, cultural background, the device used to view the art, time of the day, internet connection, the material viewed online before and after, I was curious to see how people with different backgrounds and from different age groups would react. This, together with factors such as the ‘infinite scrolling effect’, the seamless feed of information with a ‘never-ending’ flow of materials (which also can be seen as a reflection of our mass produced and consumer lives where we search for the ‘wow’ effect) are all new factors to consider when viewing art.
In A place for the Body I ‘re-bloged’ and arranged a thousand images nudity that already had been uploaded on Tumblr. The collection of images which contained work by artists such as Marina Abramović, Vanessa Beecroft, Terry Richardson and Yoko Ono as well as 17th century paintings, ‘hipster’ trends and fashion photography together with hardcore pornography.
In the same vein as Marcel Broodtheard, Andy Warhol and Fred Wilson, whoms’ exhibitions questions the object and the context by creating ‘mock’ or ‘fictional’ museums, have I in turn “arranged” an online exhibition to see whether it becomes art or not. The arrangement of images can evoke questions regarding the importance of the contents and context. But what happens to the value and meanings of these images, in this context, when art is incorporated with ‘non’ art from different cultures and backgrounds under new labels? Is this art? Can this be seen as an exhibition?
Between content, context and the body:
When we think of an exhibition in a physical museum, our initial thoughts might consist of artifacts or artistic works on display. More interesting to me, than the object itself, are the setting, social and political contexts that these objects are viewed within. As I wanted to see if the nude images in A Place for the Body would be seen as art and an exhibition when arranged and labeled as such, I decided to look at some historical aspects on the idea.
A year after Broodthear’s ‘Fiction Museum’, Andy Warhol presented Raid the Icebox in which he created a “time capsule” where he labeled himself as both an artist and curator. With his personal and professional collections, he placed everyday objects, such as shoes in a large cabinet, which were meant to be viewed and touched. This radical form of exhibition broke institutional rules about the display and value of certain objects over others. Here, the objects together, yet again, became a part of the whole.
A decade later, in 1987, Fred Wilson put on his first exhibition Rooms with a View, which brought Wilson’s interest in the object, the public, and the culture and how these work in different environments. This functioned as both an ‘artist- installation’ and exhibition, where the visitors were fooled by the manipulated settings and the works by thirty local artists, displayed in three different spaces: a modern white gallery setting, a turn-of-the-century salon and a natural history museum space. This looked calculated and arranged, but according to Wilson, the space itself was “screaming something that the viewers were not aware of”. Exhibitions of collections in a museum such as this, make the viewer ask questions about issues of display and historical value and what can be considered art and narrative. This exhibition reminded the viewer that there are, in fact, many stories contained within a single object, and not just the one story expressed and recorded. The audience at “Rooms with a view” did not realise what they were looking at until they had a closer inspection, as the experience was in fact a parody with both historical and contemporary references. The objects were grouped according to type, with vague labels, which transformed the audiences’ perceptions of the artwork. Wilson examined, questioned and deconstructed the traditional display of art and artifacts. With the use of new labels, sounds, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects, he lead viewers to recognise that changes in a context create changes in the meaning. Wilson’s juxtaposition of objects forces the viewer to question the limitations of cultural institutions and how they shaped the interpretation of historical truth, artistic value, and the language of display (Stein, 1993. pp. 110-115).
These three challenging exhibitions, have all drawn attention to the ways in which curatorial practice, arrangement and contexts, can affect our interpretation and understanding of the objects and the display which generates new meanings and work as a thought-provoking critique of our environment and how we view and read art. These projects underscore the fact that history is an act of awareness and that contemporary event and places are part of its flux. Depending on its display, the work can indicate a religious, cultural, political or decorate meaning. We can now investigate things in relation to their context and to see context as a thing itself (Shanken, 2009).
As we do not only view art in a physical space nowadays, but also as ‘documentations’ on our computer screens, we have to consider new aspects such as the role that the online curator. The colour of the walls, the light and the architecture are factors that the online curator do not need to be aware of when displaying art online, but many new elements such as; the brand of the computer, how many tabs that are up on the browser, the environment in which the audience views the art, are now important to consider. This arrangement of material generates associations that, together with the forms into which they are shaped, can establish a narrative. Internet has stimulated the scene for art curating and examines the work of the curator in relation to a wider context that will provide new possibilities and develop flexible tools for working in this fast- moving field.
Art is defined by the ability to express views and opinions with others. With the modern age of interactive social media, can allow us to express these views in a more direct way but can also increase the chance for plagiarism as some artists tend to transform and re-produce content. But this can be regarded as a transformation of art, rather than plagiarism (Jenkins, 2007). As I believe that anyone can become a curator or an artist online, we might need to play on factors such as trend, taste and the shock factor and almost consume the art on the screen to become ‘successful’ curators and artists. Questions regarding curating can move from “about something” to “for someone”, “trends” and “taste and transform from just culture to a market place for art. The freedom to draw from an endless amount of different sources can be seen as a form of pressure, which perhaps lead to a mass-industralised art communication and death of art in this fast-moving field.
Paul O’Neill sees the development of the ‘curator-as-artist’ model and the ways it has been contested and documented in his book, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), the many ways in which our perception of art has been transformed by curating and the discourses surrounding it. Juxtaposition of evocative objects can force the viewer to question cultural institutions and how they have shaped the interpretations of historical truth and the artistic value. Does the vast amount of images uploaded to the internet everyday change how we read their history and culture? Moreover, given the general shift from the form to the context and content, this may be regarded as the evolution of art in general. This is directly intertwined with the key aim to share the perspective of the world and situations with others. Roland Barthes recognised that anything in culture can be de-coded and proclaimed in 1967 “The death of the author”, where the reader creates their own meaning regardless of the authors intentions. Internet can change the borders of cultural definitions and a contemporary society or a ‘hyperreality’, which can draw the viewer into some kind of interaction with the work of art. Andrew Kean claimed in the publication, Cult of the Amateur in 2007, that Internet is killing modern culture, and that the cultural shift is accelerated and we are the ones accelerating it. Can we even consider internet as the ideal platform for art and as a new exhibition space in our post-modern society as this is a place where curators, artists and bloggers can draw from the vast volume of materials, to create new arrangement, art and narratives. Hegel (Hegel, 2011) argues that art has intertwined with history and that the innovation of artistic expression has overexposed itself. He claimed that great art is dead and nothing will ever be new again. Martin Heidegger (Heidegger, 1978) echoes Hegel’s claim but concludes that art will always correspond to the changes in truth, and that Things will always be molded by current technologies. But could this leads to declarations in regards to claims of authorships over the arrangement, not just over the art itself?
A place for the body can be seen as a link to a world that has lost the authentic artistic style and transformed the representation of the world into images and spectacles. If embracing this online culture and viewing the art and exhibition using the infinite scrolling, we can see that we have started to do so in a mechanical way, similar to the way we flick channels to watch everything on the TV screen, but ending up watching nothing. This can be seen as a symptom of impatience without depth. When I collected the feedback from people who viewed A place for the Body, this became clear from the reaction: ”I did feel like I had too scroll down to the end. I was getting tired and not sure I particularly wanted to continue, but I did. I was curious to see what else was coming, but it was mentally and physically hard.” (Woman 28, Sweden) and ”It was exhausting because you feel that you’ll never end, but it makes you to want to see more at the same time. Because you know that you will have new information only with a simple move of your hand.” (Woman 23, Spain)
Some narratives created by A Place for the Body, can for some be offensive. Internet functions as a vehicle for free expression, which is of course important, but we should at the same time, not ignore disturbing content. Internet can also be seen as a collapse of cultural boundaries. The distinction between high and low culture is invalid on internet. This shows an overview of how pornography, from soft to hardcore, gay to straight, female to male, infiltrates through media. Nudity is everywhere; from the suggestiveness of music videos to magazines; from the erotica of advertising to fashion into art works, the media drowns us with nude and pornographic aesthetics. As the private and public have become more mainstream in our popular culture, it evokes questions about whether the internet has become too sexualised, and if so, how does this effects how we view and read art. ‘A place for the body’ can be seen as an exploration of social construction of sexed subjects and cultural representations of the body. As sexuality has been shaped by historical and cultural codes, how do we view it when the borders on internet are open?
“Scrolling the blog takes away the shock of some of the more brutal images because for me it just becomes a conveyor belt of flesh and indecorous gesture, a seemingly endless flow of naked human bodies and, after the first hundred images; an anesthetized browsing experience.” (Woman, 21 UK).
According to Freud (Laquaeur,1992) the sexual drive does not have any pre- given fixed aim and it is rather through fantasy that any object, which includes persons or parts of bodies, can be a target of desire. The feedback received from people who viewed A Place for the Body, was in general a feeling of shame. No man replied nor gave feedback. Culture online has the power to view and shape our views of the past, present and the future and how we see ourselves today. As I challenged the audience with the way the content, were arranged in the context, it felt liked I stood with moral consequences in front of me. Do we need to take any responsibility when we put the materials into any order and call it art on an online platform without any filters?
Conclusion; a new space, a new time, a new meaning:
As my intentions were to create an artwork and online exhibition that would generate question regarding nudity on social network Tumblr. Just like Fred Wilson’s, Andy Warhol’s and Marcel Broodthaer’s I wanted to explore the effect of the context and the arrangements of image and the narrative it creates. As the perception of nudity and the body online is will always be shaped by the codes of your political, cultural and historical background. Therefore the reading of the nudity in a Place for the Body rests in our individual perception.
Art is defined by the ability to express views and opinions with others. This might be easier to do in the modern age of interactive social media. People have an enhanced access to the artworks, which results in the origin of inspiration to produce art- both new and old, or by curate and blog. Given the fact that the general culture and language is unified by the globalisation and digitilisation, the knowledge is illustrated by the technology and internationalization, in the context of art (Prior, 2005).
Historically museums were created to replace private collections by displaying collected artworks where the public could benefit from a shared experience. Today, internet can be the new scene for this by showing people the global implication of their personal context and demonstrating that cultures across the world. Can we, with the open boarders that internet generates, be loosing something valuable? Is there already a crisis in the new way in which we can curate and exhibit online? Do we need to rethink the presumptions that we might have about art online and adapt the way we read the work, the way we curate and use the materials? If the goal of the curator is to create meaning and provide context for art, which is what O’Neill claims, then curators must look past the critical and curatorial discourse that is rooted in the exhibition space and investigate how meaning is derived and applied outside of the physical exhibition space.
Theodor Adorno (Adorno,2007) argues that the damage done to art in modern times through a Post-Marxist analysis, that museums, exhibitions, collections, and the entire art industry, have transformed art into something to be consumed and marketed. But Heidegger goes on and claims that art will always adapt to changes in the ‘world,’ and always be molded by current technologies and equipment. Art transforms over time, others change via context and order and are responded to a globalisation. Internet can be seen as a space of social and cultural interaction and is separate from specific social and geographical places. Guy Deboard (Deboard 1984) argues that the struggle between tradition and innovation which is the principle of internal cultural development in historical societies can be carried on only through the permanent victory of innovation.
Among genitals, intimate oral sex, penetrations and general fashionable nudity, can there still be a space for the art? A Place for the Body, examines these concerns by changing the narrative of the images and putting new labels to it. Maybe the perceptions of nudity online should be re-considered? But how could that be achieved with the globalization and the platform without borders and filters? Maybe a place such as Internet, where there is a free outlet, can open this discussion and change our views of art and nudity?
Internet is a new global museum, a multicultural space but struggles between culture, content and context and can be transformed by the audience’s perception. What might this mean for the future role of the artist, the curator and the art? And can this create an impact on exhibitions in physical museums? The innovation consist of gathering new material into a new form and context which creates a monologue between images. To view the images as art in this context and framework creates a new theoretical interpretation. Objects or images, when placed together under an artist eye can become both the artwork and the exhibition. Art is received within a context of corresponding dynamics that shape meaning and interpretation and such context is an inescapable dimension of art in both its production and its reception and interpretation. By striving to find the wow and the shock effect can be acknowledged in the vast amount of work that is uploaded on Tumblr everyday which can result in a art consumerised culture.
For me, I still do not know if I can see A Place for the Body as art or an exhibition platform. I want to be open with my thoughts and challenge this new way to express art. The borders are yet do be defined on the Internet and as a new platform for art and it is down to us to decide how it will be interpreted. Every generation has their own platform to define, experiment and shape and I am intrigued to see how we will view art online in the future. But as art is a way to generate discussions, in which A Place for the Body did, it must therefor me art.
The Internet is the next stage in displaying art and we need to ask questions in regards to this and be aware of its limitations and danger but at the same time embrace it and use it as the tool it really is. This is the new evolution platform for art which will take art to a new stage- this is the rise of the Tumblr Culture.
Nina Falk
Private view for Kalopsia’s exhibition “WhatIsTextiles” yesterday.
We are exhibiting our work at ‘WhiteSpace’ in Edinburgh until thursday the 2nd of May between 10am-5pm.
Come down and what Textiles is!
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