Conceptual Photography
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Series: Mushroom Go Go Girl in 1960s Mushroom Mini Skirt mesmerized across the Madness of Molecules and Microscopes: A requiem of dialectics on advertising in Mass Culture
C – print
10 photos/ collage
Various Sizes
2021
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This series is comprised of photos from the internet of 1960s young women posing in mini skirts, photoshoped with a photo of a nuclear mushroom cloud from the internet. The contrast explores how we define civilizing when we define identity, or how we define politics and identity, when identity is a layered non linerar non fixed idea or expression which in culture, or art, is less about identity as real, or defined, and more of a happening,. The rock band, Smash Mouth wrote a song,- “Walking on Sunshine”, with the lyrics ” The hippy chicks were hypocrites, because fashion is a passion, there is no meaning to it”. The 1960s feminist were really interested in identity as a tool towards power and energy. For most feminist, the dress became more than clothes to put on and take off, the clothes became her body acting in space, or economic strustures, some discussed as symbols of independence, related to sexual energy and freedom, from a female lens. The roles of women in work, then becamse a vocational work political identity, all about expressing messages and communicating- forms of energy. Or about women labour, which is energy. This process of cateborizing things, such as geneology was in science. Science and technology also builds our political identity with research into energy and matter. Our identity, whether made, evolved, chosen, accepted, by ourselves, others, institutions, reality, Nature, history, to name a few, generally forms with time and context in many nuanced and unknowable spaces and dialectics. Pre 20th century, for many, except some philosophers or aristocracy or religious perhaps, identity was not a discipline, nor a political question, nor politic, nor social agenda, but ”a given”, meaning something to live, to experience, to discover, to celebrate, or even to deffer or obscure, in moments, yet more about “being”. Even ancient philosophers discussing the self and the cosmos and existence, probably premised “being the self”, or living, as the first step in knowing the self, or articulating the self. Perhaps today, in our contemporary moment, on this matter of self and meaning and identity, one can say the personal is political, only if you make it political, otherwise it is just personal.
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Series: Civilization
C – print / photo collage
various sizes
2020
15 photos
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Within gender studies, it is suggested we live in a Patriarchal society, or that history was globally a Patriarchal history, ( of course most gender theorists mistakenly exclude the ruling Queens over society of both male and female, or the “equality” between genders in the Aristocratic class, such as a Princesses and Princes). In fact, all of history can be seen as a more of a Patriarchal/Matriarchal or visa versa, construct or notion. In fact, there is no humanity, no civilization, no society, without women participating. For 100,000 years women and men collaborated, or expressed gender archetypes, birthing civilization, before feminist theory or any cultural discourse. So in this series to highlight how women were clearly part of defining, shaping, creating history, I collected images from internet searches, actually Firefox, with the word in the address bar of, “civilization”, or “Western History”, or “European History”, or “humanity”, to find iconic images we could see that represented stereotypical history. Then, I collected images of 1960s naked or nude women, 19/20 years old to 30/40 years old, black and white photos, and placed the image from “history” covering their vagina. This new photo exemplifies current conversations on politics of Identity, on politics of Sexuality, on the politics making things, on the politics gender, and on the politics of History- , genealogies, Disciplines, narratives, power, techniques, etc and so on. In this reframing, I would ultimately like to ask, does gender really matter? Are we actually oppressed by the discussion of gender or linking gender to every facet of Civilization? Could we envision an entire 30,000 years of civilization,-with art, architecture, fashion, lifestyle, etc, made by an asexual all- male world? No. Similarly, could we envision this human civilization made by an asexual all-female world? No. The simple fact is all that we are now, both positive and negative, functional or non functional, great or small, cliche or unique, is a shared male/female or female/male project or notion. All one has to do, is look at ancient mythology, how the relations between male and female Gods and Goddesses, or male and female characters is beautifully about the relations between this binary, to which we discover ourselves, and cosmic realities. The sun in the galaxy is both a science and words in mythology. The origin of civilization is a feminine concept. Yet, does the universe see itself in a gender notion? This is a quantum Physics questions, and I see ancient art ideas in architecture for example, as a human form, linked to understanding human relations.
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Series: Cave Woman
Digital Print
44 photos
Various Sizes
2019
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ABSTRACT |
“Women and Men’s basic Gender identity evolved from the basic division labour- 100,000 B.C, with women raising children – evolving and eventually creating around 15,000 B.C. the Family +
Health institutions, while men hunting from 100,000 B.C. to 15,000 B.C. created and evolved into War, Royalty, Mercantile institutions, and both men and women’s work/division of labour, created Religion, Economics, Education institutions. With these institutions, an aristocratic and academic class grew guiding these institutions, and a middle class grew within these institutions, whereby gender identity for the middle class, became more ordering layers onto the basic biological sex- male and female, where gender became more complex, facilitated by language, art, culture, communication, technology, which politicized the traditional sexes, sexuality, and femininity/masculinity . In other words, the act of civilizing the middle class and the governing by aristocracy of the middle class, complexified the sex into gender, adding layers of gender markers, boundaries, labels, signs, via culture and art and language, pushing women and men further from an intimate self knowing based on simple biological sex
relations to nature. This institutional gender experience was and is, less about femininity/masculinity or sexuality or sexes, and more a political gender concept discussed, discoursed, textualized, by Art, Culture, Media, Language, Technology, where this textuality simultaneously delinks men and women from their prehistorical essence of sex/sexuality/ femininity and masculinity into gender layers, a gender mask, a conceptual gender, onto the knowing self. In this context, the more gender identity and gender discourse expands onto the self, especially in the context of institutions, the less we become
feminine and masculine, or less men and women. “
– from “Notes on the Birth of Gender” 2019
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This series, ‘Cave Women’ examines appropriation in art, what defines
sexuality, and mediation of femininity and gender identity. This series
began by googling images of “sexy cave women”: I was thinking of sex
100,000 years ago, before Feminism, before Gender politics, roles, identity, before Mediation, before religious, political, economic institutions.these forces controlling/defining /delimiting, sexuality, sex, biology, where men and women simply existed and could have “natural” non political sex or gender relations without institutions or ‘isms’. So, in creating this series, I appropriated, copied images of nude or naked women in caves, acting like cave women, or cartoons of women with dinosaurs, etc. By copying images, I knew I had to alter the image to avoid copyright infringement, so I placed squares over the sexual parts = breasts and vagina, and also the face- which is also sexual. Here, it’s clear, a woman’s sexuality is in her face, equally to her breasts or vagina; second, that clothes make the naked body sexual or sexualized, that clothes, especially tight and partially covering clothes, heighten our sexual feelings, because the mind fills in the white spaces; it is like Marshal McLuhan’s theory Hot and Cold Media. With “Cold Media” = older technology like painting, radio, books, we fill in the “blanks”, or non detail, with our imagination, thus it is very vivid in our imagination. Whereas with “Hot Media” = digital T.V., c.g.i., film, photography, there is so much detail that we can not imagine, thus has very limited imagination. Also, to avoid copyright issues,I cropped these images to give a new and stronger composition, whereby the result reads like a ‘Modrianesque’ trans/abstract painting or a, ‘Theo van Doesberg’ narrative/abstract painting, or a ‘Kazimir Malevich ’ – White on “skin”, or ‘ White on Body”. Also, in this work, I question the notion of cultural appropriation- using or taking or incorporating other people’s cultural images in an artwork not related to the original culture, where I believe this is a contradictory term, as Modern art and culture inherently involves appropriation, ie. using other images, being influenced by other images, incorporating other images, adding to other images, copying parts of other images, as there is no true originality in art, every art links to or “copies” something before it. Also, with such traditions as collage, like Braque and Picasso, copying or “stealing” or referencing other images, is artistic, and not actually stealing or appropriation. There is no originality in Art because we as artist copy reality, the world around us, or copy and interpret at the same time. In other words, all art is free to copy both reality and art and anything. This is a primary function of art,…to copy. Also, this series, Cave Woman, ironically challenges the political correctness in cultural appropriation, as with the first cave paintings, made by women or men, they painted what they saw, so they appropriated or copied Nature, with symbols. Further, to suggest indigenous culture can be protected under the rubric of copyright and ownership by a race, is also a contradiction to Western art’s freedom to discuss or share race, or culture, or reality etc. It is a beautiful act of art to appropriate, or steal or partially copy or
reference or copy or look at and record or influence or study or add onto, including Duchamp’s found object, including Braque and Picasso’s collage, including Postmodern art, including contemporary advertising. Cultural appropriation also suggests there is a moral responsibility to a culture, to a race, in not “misusing” their images,
which negates the Western concept of art for art sake in order to explore
and exchange ideas to “offend”, to challenge, to query, to reframe, to
give new ways of seeing. Art like the act of thinking, is not about
morality like religion: art is outside of morality and ethics because art
is not real, it is fake. In fact, cultural appropriation in limiting the
sharing of ideas, are reducing our experience of indigenous culture, second, they are limiting our experience to be offended by art ( a fake offense as art is not real, it is fake) to learn and think. Cave Women, also explores sexuality, and in terms of sexuality is also something authoritative forces like to control. This series, explores traditional classic femininity and women,- voluptuous sexy women with large breasts expressing their sexuality, where its o.k for beautiful attractive women to express sexuality, in a stereotypical cliche way, – Playboy nudes,or posing sexy, or being/or subjugated by the gaze, male or female. Why are stereotypes always non positive? What if stereotypes are fine, but the academic male and female feminist who create discourses that challenges the traditional classic physical female beauty as negative stereotypical where negative may involve pride,emotive confidence, self awareness, who over reading simple plastic mass culture presentation of such a traditional classic physical female beauty as power, when it is rather, communication of beauty, in terms of a natural definition based on youth, formalism, structural function? Is the foundation of stereotype mass culture mistrust that feminists and academics and media and institution simply do not like beauty to have a standard or clear definition, such as traditional classic physical female beauty? Have cliche physically beautiful women always been subjugated, criticized, controlled, blamed, disliked because they are traditional physically “beautiful” and “sexy” in conventional traditional ways? Do we all have to dislike Manet’s Luncheon in the park because the nude women is not only naked but traditionally physically beautiful and not showing physical beauty, but rather her female gaze which is also a source of female sexuality? In Ancient Greece, were Aphrodite, Athena, and the goddesses of Olympia, whose marble statues in the Parthenon portrayed “perfect” female physical bodies,- youth, physically fit form, birthing function, proportional, smooth, soft, also loved and disliked, by “less physically attractive” Athenian women,and Athenian men who could not date such beautiful women, as a simplistic social read, or could not economically or socially compete, as a cultural read, or who think the body is the easiest way to express power, or who think the body is about gender? Maybe feminism, postmodernism, post structuralism, should ask these personal questions, not as politics, but as social conversation, to be truly an egalitarian, holistic, multiplicity, postmodernist ideology? Maybe theoretically physically less “attractive” feminist males and feminist females, as a political venture, should create the contexts in institutions, to learn to love physically beautiful bodies, and physically beautiful things, and physically beautiful experiences, rather than approach beauty as a political idea? If academics could delimit discourses on how beauty functions, their consumption could be as natural as those in society who do not experience the “politically incorrect” or negatively
stereotypical? Or don’t consume pop mass culture because culture is not
correct when its for the masses ? Why would any great
civilization base its culture on the stereotypical physically “unattractive”
or ugly or non beautiful or non stereotypical, in terms of Mediation? This last question is a social, anthropological, philosophical,
theoried, and a political question for history to answer. Can we idealize “ugliness” – i.e. not the stereotypical definition of ugly as ugly, but rather simple the binary juxtaposition to simple identifiers we factual accept of describing any shape as beautiful- round, soft, symmetry, small, cute, youthful, like a new flower is structurally more beautiful than a aged flower, by nature, design, function. That youthful beauty, or clear definitions of beauty such as pleasant sounds versus sharp sounds, we can say variations in beauty exist, yet by definition, physical beauty is not debatable. For society to actually progress, as progress needs motivation, and beauty, like a sunset motivates more than a collection of garbage or a collection of c.d’s or a collection of oysters or a collection of stamps or a collection of dolls ? Are “feminists discourses on beauty”- ie question standard female beauty, standard human form , standard youth, standard modern humanity, because the stereotypical physical female beauty are limited, such as delimited to ideally youthful, ideally smooth, ideally tall, ideally symmetrical, etc, where these cliche male and female beauty attributes are too ideal, or is barbie just a very well shaved completely hairless cave woman so transparent,or barbie is a female who accepts cultural definitions of physical beauty so accepting? Does physical beauty have to be debated? Maybe accepting the cliche standard traditional classic form of physical female beauty is like the classic traditional stander of physical beauty like a flower or sunset? If there was no mediation would there be no cliche standard traditional female beauty? Ironically, serendipitous, in mass production, in mediation, what if beauty, mediated, is actually ugly too? Have you ever been tired of cliche slick traditional classic beautiful photos of anything? Has female beauty led humanity astray, into war, poverty, competition, and hate? Or is female beauty still in the process of being created in the project of civilization, and feminists, if a collective or a modality of discourse or linked to institution of knowledge production, have decided to try and interrupt this process with controlling, describing, framing, the mediated female images of standard beauty? Why? Since the birth of civilization, we have idealized beautiful female “beauty”, but since 1960s Feminism, some of our culture is trying to either re-define beauty entirely…to the extent there is no consumption of classic or conventional beauty, or, in theory, idealistically negate it by saying its wrong, or idealistically attempt to displace it with masculinity or the colour Grey, shame it as though feminism is a type of religion; so why bother having any female representation, in culture maybe ban all female representation of all female beauty and then we can talk about something more meaningful? Such are perhaps unnecessary or redundant questions, yet with any ism, such is simply dialectics or politics, or both intertwined. Can one simply ask questions about beauty, the body, image, style, representation, or is there an established subtextual codified discourse. Premade. Delineated. Entrenched in a fluxing lexicon. Like regulating technology, an impossible, beauty can not be regulated, or like environmentalism, beauty is inherent in the striving for the impossible or meta task, or poverty reduction, which is more meaningful than beauty, we may find beauty more meaningful than poverty, the environment, technology. Why does beauty reduction have to be a feminist pursuit? Or maybe we should ask Why is a naked or nude female body always interesting? or why Does the naked female body represent cultural beauty more than the naked male body? Ultimately, the societal question is why or how, for the last 60 years, has Feminism been anti femininity, for lack of better conceptualizations of feminism’s discourses, when femininity itself has been a concept evolving for 100,000 years?
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Series: We love the Mainstream Mass Media and it’s Masks and Mascara
c – print
19 photos
Various sizes
2019
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In this series, Donovan, using a digital camera, I photographed the screen of my computer while a Youtube video played a video from the 1970s, capturing the image of a female movie star- Sue Lyon, – a women expressing femininity without “gender politics” ( 1 ) who played in “ Lolita ” and “Night of the Iguana”, ( 1960s films ) . This video, a series of photographs of Sue Lyon, is of the rock band- Donovan, playing the the rock song,- Sunshine Superman, functions like an archive of history- where. people can experience the past,
scroll through history, almost like they know it – videos and photographs represent a type of ‘documenting truth’ – even as photoshop can remake photos and video into “fake reality”. In terms of video documentation, however, myth making is the more apt truth. This series, looks at the intent of “truth” finding and photography. Essentially, I am photographing the internet, as a way to document internet history, but also to study the information which comes with this video- such as, the advertisement for women’s bra in the upper left corner, other music videos, and sometimes the “views”, “likes”, and “dislikes” [ Sunshine Superman – Donovan 6,327,423 views •Published on Jun 19, 2007 ( Sept 12 2019 )]. I find it interesting too, in photographing moving videos, how the camera can randomly document moving images in film, delinking my authorship, control, like in abstract painting; the liberate mark-making such as Jackson Pollock drips on a canvas. Further, by documenting the internet by photographing my computer screen, rather than a screen saver, or saving images, I can capture the history of the internet.
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1. ” Gender Politics is academically propositioned as expanding the individual self into a greater relations with the self, however, like any discourse or textuality in layers, in discursivity, in power, gender politics distorts and complexifies the individual from their foundational biological seminal connection to their sex- male or female, and is probably a designed process evolving from the birth of institutions,Family,Medicine, Education, State, Military, Government, Military, Religion, Media, Science, Technology,Media, Trade, Economics- where ancient art, language, communication, directed by Royal, aristocratic, religious elites, created and delimited and controlled the middle class. Gender politics, as language and discursivity, in it’s volume and mass, orders the biological self; it co-opts from the self a direct relations to nature and the world, where the layers of gender discourse, textuality, ideology, mask, obscure,delimit, foundational seminal organic notions of the self, a self of seminal biology in historical co- relations to existence. So the more gender discourse layered onto the self,with the expansion of institutions, removes gender from the knowing self,- a basic emotive and spiritual understanding of their sex- male and female – where being male and female are part of a primordial human condition. “
– from ” Notes on the Birth of Gender “, 2019, K Immanuel
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Series: No Tokyo Olympics 2020….a glorified party for athletes marking politics and corporate interests
Photo Collage/ C – Print
30 photos
Various Sizes
2020
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“No Olympics series” is a photo collage series with photoshop which explores how contemporary protesting has some business like qualities, such as protesters can be arrested and still attain vocations in the future. Protesters also market their politics, to convince the Masses. Protesters use social media to advertise. With this series, there is a juxtaposition between the sexy athletic Olympic athletes and the casually dressed and not so sexy protesters. There is also a juxtaposition in that the Olympics are sponsored by Corporations and protesters mostly protest corporations, except for a few corporations like Nike, which have adopted ‘ Brand Activism”- creating products with a politic, either diversity or environmentalism or feminism, to market their product. As an artist, I too, am marketing the marketers, by creating artistic photographs for sale and distribution. We are all in a sea of marketing- presenting ideas and images: we are all mediating a genealogy of images, ideas, concepts, documents, text towards manufacturing a collective of images, ideas, concepts, documents, text towards promoting a potential meaning and truth in dialectics with institutions, Media, structures of energy, part of culture, discourse, ideas, as a simulacra of political positions, meant for mass consumption, mass pleasure, mass articulation, of the self, of the idea, of the context, in a cycle of mass production, in a consuming society. My art is a product in this cycle, that can become an advertisement to new consumers.
And the Olympics, athletes, media, and myself, are marketing a mass produced image of female body, expressing power, dedication, skill, experience, talent, beauty, yet this is not the or an ideal, rather it is an image which academics say is an ideal, which everyday consumers say is interesting, and women can see representation. This image is one of many images, in a sea of images, but not real, yet perhaps with some meaning, if one chooses to see the image as important, as relevant, as necessary, to reality, to understanding femininity, sport, culture, self, others, institutions, art, body, mind, and the array of aspects or qualities communicated in an image of an athlete engaging in a game of sport.
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- ( Tags) : Photograph, collage, marketing, art, conceptual art, modern art, images, Olympics, Tokyo, avant garde, experimental art, athletes, Amsterdam Art Gallery, New York Art Gallery, design, aesthetic, image, advertising, Los Angeles Art Gallery, art curator, museums, contemporary art, photography, c print, paper, beauty, politics, women athletes, gymnasts, swimmers, track and field, volley ball, sports, sports and politics, photo collage, cubism, Surrealism, Berlin Art Gallery, London Art Gallery,
- Tag: .Photograph, collage, marketing, art, conceptual art, modern art, images, Olympics, Tokyo, avant garde, experimental art, athletes, Amsterdam Art Gallery, New York Art Gallery, design, aesthetic, image, advertising, Los Angeles Art Gallery, art curator, museums, contemporary art, photography, c print, pper, beauty, politics, women athletes, gymnasts, swimmers, track and field, volley ball, sports, sports and politics, photo collage, cubism, Surrealism, Berlin Art Gallery, London Art Gallery,
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Series : Nude
c- print
17 photo
Various Sizes
2006 – present
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Models: Johanna de Schipper, Ester, Model # 1 , Kerry Rae, Kelly Kerssens,
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This is a series of randomly photographing life models posing nude in real space as a simple study of body, form, light, expressions, experiences, relational to the history of the camera documenting people and the naked body. Ultimately, photographing people naked or nude, is fun. Fun in being naked, fun in documenting naked. Fun as looking. Fun as being in an environment like our ancient selves. The quest for understanding the inner self, the universe, time and space by mediating a naked body, began with the ancients in 50000 BC simply looking at each other. With the evolution of the institution of art, painting in 14,000 BC , with the caves of Lascaux, the early humans began to look at their world and themselves in painting. In 10 century BC, the ancient
Egyptians began to view the bodies and self via sculpture and
writing. In 5 century BC, in ancient Greece, turned sculpture into a
medication on the body and its beauty. This journey of early humans
looking at their external body through a medium, brought us through
Renaissance paintings, ton 1888, when the Kodak camera was invented,
and the act of looking at the body became a mainstream masses and
mass culture activity. This series continues this quest and journey.
In this, capturing moments of beauty in the process of a mediation of
feminine, beauty, light, aesthetics, technology, time and space.
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Series: 1984 Surveillance State Urban City …. in the new Brave New Pseudo Western Meta Paradise of mice in a lab experiment
C – Print
16 photos
Various Sizes
Digital camera
2009
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At the Amsterdam Central Station, around 2 pm, in October, where buses, trams, taxis dropped off and picked up people, I photographed groups of people. Then, I selected about 20 photos from 100 photos ( digital camera ) , and using photoshop, edited/cropped specific individuals from the group, to create portraits of individuals.
Like street photography in today’s context, these photos mime CCTV surveillance video cameras in public urban space implemented by security and police, documenting, observing and analyzing people in
public – a contextualization of people as “mice in a lab experiment”,
in terms of Data collection and surveillance capitalism. Is this a
historical process where art and exploitative political institutions
converge, into the Bauldrillard simulacra? I like the free facial expressions,
yet this is what facial recognition software desires to oppress and
subjugate- the beauty of the human face, of the portrait in a free moment,
of freedom which is part of the human body connected to beauty, whereasVan Eyke, Vermeer, Rembrandt ( 1 ), Lenardo, Durer, etc ,sought to capturethe face to reveal beauty. There is a night and day difference between how artists approach the body/face and how technology approaches the body/face. Art liberates. Technology obscures or differs or subjegates. This is what is being played our in public space, at times, if people buy into it, as people can chose not to photograph people in public and post it, yet we loose something important, documenting our history, and other’s history, so it’s a Modern Catch 22, how to compromise privacy, with the importance of revealing what is private for future conversations. It is question, pre 1888, and the invention of the camera, by Kodak, no one had to ask, so perhaps as long as the question is posed, capturing poses in public space, even at the expense of some type of reasonable privacy is all we can say, and let the future figure out this catch 22. However, it is beautiful, to have both, photos of a party, and no photos of a party, or public event, or public space, and this dialectic between having and not having documentation, is what history is about, the empty and non recorded experiences, in conversation with the documented. History is actually more empty than full, which keeps the narratives of history, safe from being fully known, as not knowing history, or a history that is fragmented, is more important, than a totally documented history, which is currently an impossibility, and hopefully always will be an impossibility. It is the impossibility of knowing, which unites and creates a more stable foundational civilization, because it keeps the “play of humanity” fresh and open to greater possibility.
The effect of enlarging the photos was painterly, which is apt for the Dutch tradition of painting, like Vemeer or van Eyke.
1.) ( Wiki- Rembrandt ) In a letter to Huygens, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art: the greatest and most natural movement, translated from de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid. The word “beweegelijkheid” is also argued to mean “emotion” or “motive”. Whether this refers to objectives, material or otherwise, is open to interpretation; either way, critics have drawn particular attention to the way Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual.[36
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1.) ( Wiki- Rembrandt ) In a letter to Huygens, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art: the greatest and most natural movement, translated from de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid. The word “beweegelijkheid” is also argued to mean “emotion” or “motive”. Whether this refers to objectives, material or otherwise, is open to interpretation; either way, critics have drawn particular attention to the way Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual.[36]
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Series:. The myth of flowers
( Fashion TV (Holland) – Photographing the Television with a digital camera )
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C – print
11 photos
Various Sizes
2008
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In Enschede, Holland, was in a hotel, and was watching T.V. There was a channel presenting all fashion shows, model interviews, called Fashion Television.
I photographed the television set with a digital camera, I took 500 plus photos of the T.V. program. By taking photos of moving T.V. film, I was finding images by chance. This process was like ‘fishing for fish’.
The photos I selected for this series are the most ” ether- like”,
or “ambiguous”, or ” airy”. Or maybe “ephemeral” – brief glimpses, and photos are relational to the 1920’s surrealism,
The media technique of using the camera as an aesthetic tool abstracts the formal technology into a human approach to creatively and romantically and philosophically experiencing the physical world.
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Series : Dutch Bicycles emancipating the Landscape
C Print
9 photos
Various sizes
2006- 2009
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While living in Holland, I bicycled a lot to the University, and was bored, so I sometimes took photos with my cell phone of women bicycling in front of me. This series became a way of looking at, exploring, revealing, grasping, celebrating everyday Dutch identity, in
terms of people, culture, lifestyle, and landscape. I selected women, as most of the students at the University were women and I wanted a repetition in the series. Also, in terms of identity, women’s
long hair created a unique composition against their jacket and women’s jackets were often aesthetic- patterns and material, and in portraits of the back of people, the hair and jacket are very important signifies and compositional forms. However, ironically, in terms of basic foundational identity, I soon became more interested in the variety of
landscapes informing the women’s identity, since the subjects’ distinguishing details-, their hair, jackets, bags, bicycles, became less distinct within this collectivity. As I randomly photographed while riding my bicycle in the Dutch landscape, I felt a bit closer to Dutch culture, where the bicycle is greatly part of their every day lives and culture, more than just riding from point A to B – such as carrying large furniture on bicycles, bicycles to transport children, bicycles to share, bicycle for recreation, bicycles to get to the pub, to go on dates, to travel to work, etc and so on. In this, this series structurally continues
this use of the bicycle as a point of expanding the dialogue on Dutch identity and culture. I also see this photograph series as a way to play with the camera- there is an art to riding a bicycle and photographing at the same time. Riding and photographing with a cell phone, is an art form. Documenting this everyday moment, was a way to increase one’s daily routine experience with a challenge, as simply riding a bicycle to school was basic routine. In this, finding the art, in the process of bicycling, expands mediation. The medium of photography, portraiture, art design, can be more the textual discourse than the subject/theme/image. Images discovered in the process of living, in an environment, in a culture, in a history, celebrate civilization, as a undefinable process, part of the defined reality of culture, life, experiences.
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Series : Problematics of Post-Colonial Theory
C – print
4 photos
Various Sizes
2008
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Colonialism is a passive/aggressive war- where the colonized and colonizer are in a type of miscommunication, like passive/aggressive behaviour- coy, subtextual, indirect, manipulative, avoiding, controlling, where no real political solutions are resolved, and both are subjugated by the dysfunctional relations, sometimes equally, sometimes .unequally. However, in this relations, trade, commerce, cultural exchange, social engagement, political knowledge,
happen”
–Notes on the Problematics of Postcolnialism 2016, K Immanuel
With the first photo of this series, the black Merchant and two slave
young women,I thought of the fascism and futility and incorrectness of
“political correcting” our history or art. I thought of a recent painting
titled by Emily Carr, “ Indian Church” which for some is not politically
correct using the word “Indian”, but historically correct. An Art Gallery
of Ontario curator, Georgiana Uhlyarik, decided Emily Carr, the artist
was wrong to title her painting with the world ” Indian “, which for many is not an “offensive” word. So Georgiana, a Post-colonial curator decided to edit/ correct, the painting, in the name of ‘political correctness’.In may, 2018, Georgiana Uhlyarik, the gallery’s curator of Canadian art. Of the Art Gallery of Ontario, posthumously renamed, Emily Carr’s Painting,” Indian Church”, 1929 to “Church at Yuquot Village” without Emily Carr’s permission..Georgiana, stated, in a political correct way, that Emily Carr would have not used the word “Indian”, since “some”, today, seemingly see this word as “racist”. ( which actually the word “Indian” is not racist, as the Navajo Indians use the word, there is an entire nation named “India”, and the word Indian has no hard nor derogatory sounds) So, in effect, this postcolonial feminist curator, has re- edited history and changed history, which is extremely offensive to any “real” artist who deserves the right to name their art in any “offensive” or “non-offensive” way. Essentially, Georgiana, is acting like a “traditional fascist” – those who control art, and is actively “erasing” art and “politically correcting” art, – essentially “cleansing” art like the Nazis did in the 1930’s, but under the rubric of kindness or humanness or politeness ( ie. the ends justify the means) In other words, some curators today, have the power now to totally and unequivocally judge art and cleanse it as they see fit. Is it now, the role and function of the Museum to edit, cleanse, and correct art? If so we should stop funding all Museums, and sue every curator for altering our Canadian art and history? ( 1 ) To answer Chris Rattan, in the following News Article, the only authority is the artist, not the curator. Curators should not be able to fix art, especially for ” political correcting ” reasons. Artists who title theirs works,have every right to be ” incorrect”. In other words, we can not have curators, changing the titles of art works, ( especially those given by the artist) every 100 years, especially post-humus, especially since the artist deserves the right to be wrong, in titles or in the work itself. Perhaps, today’s curators, think themselves artists, or even greater, “priests of artists”, to make art less “offensive”. In this, making art less offensive, is offensive. Art’s right to be “offensive” is important for so many reasons, one, is that it sometimes captures a moment in time, or perhaps, the Ziegiest. But in the very least, it documents the artist’s experience. To say Emily Carr is wrong, is to say artists have to be as fake as politicians or priests or news reporters, who have to be “diplomatic” in their profession. An Artist is not diplomatic. They are honest. And Georgina is censoring “honesty”. In this, in the last 50 or 40 years, some curators, art teachers, gallery staff, have been learning an array of politically correct procedures, from title warnings, from signs informing the viewer of “mature material”, of contextualizing, where by curators have become the end of liberty, for art and artists, whereby Museums, are like political institutions, hallowed halls of power,by the ruling elite – curators. Perhaps, it is time to “defend” the Museums. They – curators, can not be “trusted” to “protect” art and artists.
1. ( News Article ) “ Who has the authority to rename a problematic painting? The AGO recently re-titled an Emily Carr painting with an offensive name, but revising a title originally selected by the artist crosses a line in some circles” By Chris Rattan
Jun 5, 2018
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Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario
On the Art Gallery of Ontario’s online learning module, Gerald Masters, the former adjunct curator of Canadian art, considers the racist title of one of Emily Carr’s most famous paintings. In bold script, readers are posed a question: “If you were to reframe the term Indian Church, what name would you choose?”
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Four years after the module was last updated, the gallery has answered: Indian Church is now Church At Yuquot Village.
Since the AGO’s Canadian and Indigenous Art department, led by curators Georgiana Uhlyarik and Wanda Nanibush, revised the name to remove ‘Indian,’ an outdated and colonialist term for the Indigenous peoples of North America, the usual debate around amending art’s problematic titles has ensued. Is it historical revisionism? Censorship? Political correctness?
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But among the terms accompanying the debate, one that hasn’t been discussed is “shifting authority.” In this case: who has the right to use certain terms?
Before changing the name, the AGO consulted with the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations. Carr first saw the church on the territory of member nation Mowachaht Muchalaht in a 1928 visit to the West Coast. The painting was first exhibited in 1929 with the title Indian Church, Friendly Cove, BC.
The AGO rested the authority of the name change with the community most directly impacted by it: the Nuu-chah-nulth. It shouldn’t be underestimated how significant that is in a complicated debate that usually centers the artist’s or the institution’s authority over artworks with problematic names.
“The people of that territory were supportive of our changing the title,” says Uhlyarik. “The most important thing for me was that they wanted to be associated with the painting. Had they not agreed, we would have gone in a different direction.”
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Worldwide, galleries are increasingly contending with offensive and dated language accompanying its works. In 2015, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum started the Adjustment of Colonial Terminology project with a goal to review over 200,000 titles and descriptions in the museum’s uncatalogued and replace them with more neutral terms.
Much of the work the museum acquired over time was untitled. In those cases, employees often labeled them using the racist language of the era. If the work was titled by the artist, the Rijksmuseum opts for a preferred title next to the original.
The AGO has adopted a similar approach, affixing a label with an asterisk next to the title of Carr’s painting that reads: “During her lifetime, Emily Carr exhibited the work with the title ‘Indian Church’ in keeping with the language of her era. The AGO is amending titles that contain terms today considered discriminatory.”
Revising a title originally selected by the artist crosses a line in some circles. In 2016, Paul Lang, then deputy director and chief curator at the National Gallery of Canada, told Canadian Art, “The only time we wouldn’t change a title is if it was the original title given by the artist.”
Uhlyarik stresses that Indian Church falls into the category of a descriptive title rather than the more creative, prose-like titles that Carr, also a writer, gave her works (and which Uhlyarik wouldn’t change). The revised title is equally matter-of-fact in its description, serving to specify a locale. When asked if Carr’s artistic freedom in titling her work is being trampled even with the distinction, Uhlyarik observes that “we’re attached to titles because we believe they open up some kind of way in for us.
“But my feeling is that the painting in and of itself holds all of the contradictions, all of the tensions, all of the issues, everything that Emily Carr aspired to, everything she saw and sketched and knew,” she continues, arguing that Carr’s artistic statement is preserved in the work and not, in this case, its unfortunate title.
The AGO will consider other works with offensive terminology on a case-by-case basis, Uhlyarik adds. No official policy is in place, and revising titles won’t always be the approach taken.
In the AGO’s learning module, McMaster writes about shifting authority. He notes that the church in Carr’s painting burnt down in the 1960s, but the Mowachaht Muchalaht rebuilt it in the 90s. They raised several totem poles inside the church as a sign of this shifting authority. The building now functions as a community center, signaling that “First Nations now control their destinies, including how churches operate in their territories.”
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The same goes for the church’s memorialization in paint. The AGO consulted with other stakeholders, including Carr scholars, but it wouldn’t have moved forward if the Mowachaht Muchalaht did not support the amended name, an affirmation that First Nations should lead the conversation in how their culture is depicted in artwork.
It’s appropriate that this shift has come via a Carr piece. There have been volumes written about the polarizing figure – a white artist who appropriated (or maybe you’re of the camp that prefers “was influenced by”) the culture of the First Nations of the British Columbian coast.
Much more could be written about how radical it really is for First Nations to have the authority to change colonialist depictions of their culture.
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.Emily Carr ” Indian Church” oil on canvas, 1929
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Series: How to consume art academically: Documenting an Artist Lecture at De Appel Gallery ( Amsterdam )
C – Print
13 photo
Various sizes
Digital Camera
2008
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Documenting an art lecture at De Appel art gallery in Amsterdam, this series explores the performative aspect of lectures. This lecture was unique, in that the lecturer was using a slide projector, a rare older media. With each slide, there was an approximately 5 minute discourse by the lecturer. It felt like story telling. Another unique quality to this talk, was that the entire audience sat on the left side of the lecturer, in 4 or 5 rows of 10 plus seats. So we were looking at the slides from an angle. This experience was akin to theatre or a play.
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Series: A.I. Mannequin and Elon Musk on a date in Paris
C – print
15 photo
Various Sizes,
Digital Camera
2008
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When I saw Mannequins in a store window in Enschede, Holland, 2009, in a cliche way they looked like “real” people. There is a scientific study that suggests generally, most people are uncomfortable with mannequins or dolls that look “real”. However, in the last several years, 2019, sex dolls for ales (and females) have been designed to look very “real”, yet slightly exaggerated – very large breasts, thin wastes, very large buttocks, etc. These sex dolls are being designed with A.I. Intelligence, A.I. Emotions, which are testing the boundaries and ethical issues of creating a “new species”. Further complexifying this issue, is that some robot sex dolls as companions are “curing” mental illness,
depression, suicide, more than pharmaceutical drugs. What will be our relations with “realistic” robot A. I. dolls? Will this divide cis heterosexual male and female relationships and love, or unite?
Will life- like super realistic A.I. emotional robots be better wives and husbands, than real human males and females? Will A.I. female robots eventually learn to accuse real human males of sexual transgressions and visa versa; Or will A.I male robots eventually learn to accuse A.I female robots of sexual transgressions? Will the prostitution sex trade industry include more robot females than human females? What these questions reveal, is that laws, sexuality, culture, feelings, working, making things, social realizations, technology, art, media, as modern humans are perhaps, more part of the myth of civilizing we have created by our desire to categorize, label, design, our identity, which can be seen as artificial, meaning of no real political, social or cultural importance, when such things are now , A.I emotive robot forms and function? Society, humanity, culture, civilizing will undue its relevance, by making A.I emotive robots, who can then speak to us, explaining the futility and absurdist of these things. At which point, humanity will have to develop an even more complex idea of sexuality, culture, being, expression, to understand itself.
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Series: Marie Antoniette looking for Marco Polo in the 21st Century urban city designed by Microsoft and Google with Marcus Aurelius
C print
14 photos
Various Sizes
2006 – present
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Documenting women, in a post feminist world, is a political act. Or is it. Is the act only political for feminists, postmoderns, post structuralists, because they read feminist theory. Whereas, for non academics. Photographing women, is simply, a photograph of a woman.
The Leftists academics, have spun such a web of discourses, that now, for university students, the image of females, once something about conventions, like beauty, human, form, image, has moved into a sphere of text and language, understood by a process of cognitive reasoning, instead of emotional empirical experience. In this sense, everyday people are now more intelligent than academics, because the understanding of the body, image, fashion, culture, for the everyday person, is something immediately and passionately consumed by the senses and emotion and the personal, instead of the academics interference of discourse, reason, logic, textuality, whereby the everyday person, without theory, has a more beautiful and deeper understanding of the body, femininity, life, because the visceral knowledge in empirical experiences is more poetic. And theory is nothing in comparison to poetry, in terms of great meaning and deeper understanding.
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Series : Sitting on Zandvoort Beach thinking of the Sahara Desert.
.C – print
11 + photos
Various Sizes
Digital Camera
2009
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In September 2009, sitting on the beach, I noticed it looked like a dessert, perhaps the Sahara Dessert. I began to see this particular beach as a metaphor of, an illusion to, the movie, Lawrence of Arabia. There was a beautiful great emptiness. People walking on the beach were spaced apart like trees. The modernist buildings in the background looked like Gerrit Rietveld or Le Corbusier in the south of France.I see this conceptual photograph series as reinventing contexts. We do not necessarily have to exist in empirical space in terms of its defined realities. We can exist in a place, however we choose, in that moment.
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Series: Documenting performance art at Dutch Art Fair
.C – print
26 photos
Various Sizes
2008
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Art Fair- ( Kunstvlaai 7 Art Pie International, 2008, Amsterdam ), A photographed documentation of a performance – 5 to 8 minute; a series of continuous photographs in 30 – 45 second intervals. The performance started with the artist standing in the centre of a small intimate black stage, in white clothes, handling, “playing with”, presenting, a large piece of what seemed to be ‘red’ meat, mostly likely beef. She sometimes rubbed the meat on her body, arms, while in statuesque – Zen – ballet type positions or forms, facing the audience, showing the audience, yet not overtly engaging with the audience. She then moved into a seated form, removed one piece of her white attire- a lace white tutu skirt. Above her approximately 10 feet was a large video screen with various images moving in slow paced slide show ( which included her in a Buddha pose, naked, amid a blueish monochrome background). This video formed a dualism- herself on the stage and herself on the video screen. She then moved into a laying down position on her back and placed the meat on her stomach, then lifted her body up, her arms arched backwards, making a type of ” human curved furniture table” with the meat, now a squashed ball form, in the middle of her facing- up – stomach, pointing the red meat ball to the ceiling. She held this yoga type table position for perhaps 30 seconds . Then, she returned to a laying down pose on her back. Without the red meat, she laid flat and controlled and muscled, in a semi crucified lower back arched pose in the center of the stage; articulating, shaping, expressing, her body into a meta elongated pointed sculpted pose
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