Visual Arts, Columbia University, New York

This course examines ways of looking and ways of seeing, both personally & professionally as artists and in a larger cultural context. Through field trips to contemporary art and other cultural sites, conversations with visiting critical thinkers and practicioners, readings, discussions, and visual & written responses, we will examine how we look, think, act, create and respond--critically questioning our own artistic practices and ways of looking at the world.

Showing posts with label AA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AA. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

What is an Image (AA)


An image is a point of stillness. It is arrested visual information. A basic unit of comprehension. An image may be analyzed and organized in the context of other images (a thing next to another thing, and so on). This compilation of data may provide the illusion of a presentation of truth. But any legitimate claim to truth the image may have is swamped by the infinite multitude of unseen truths that it’s own assertions deny. One imagines a film reel—a series of images. One after the other each presents a truth of a unique perspective in a fleeting moment of time. But none of these images, arrested, can come close to the truth of the originary moment, because true experience is not a series of framed stills. Time may be broken down into nanoseconds for our comprehending pleasure, but understanding clocks, even building them, does not change the way we live time.
An image becomes poetry when it manages to look beyond its being looked at. A clock becomes art when placed next to another.  


Monday, April 23, 2012

This is a Forgery (AA)























To love an idea so much as to steal it...the ultimate artist's taboo. But it would be so easy. I'd calculate the weight (that of Felix and his partner) and place my order (find the company specified in the contract). Fill my room with candy.
To take it would be to give it away. Everyone who visited me would leave with a part of it.
But I can't afford this work. I would have to let it wither. I would have to watch them die and then live my life in the wrappers. Is this a burden I could bear?
Perhaps I should just get one of these

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

MANIFESTO 2012

























To follow are 139 statements towards a working Manifesto by the members of Eye & Idea 2012.

PAY ATTENTION MOTHERFUCKERS

1. Curiosity is my inspiration. The class is the reason I took this class.
2. My work is about the suspense that comes with the loss of balance, and the resulting tales that come with the process of regaining equilibrium.
3. Balance is:
4. …About things in moderation.
5. …Things in various perspectives.
6. …Expensive Jordans and an unassuming gait on Erie Ave.
7. …Understanding nature, yet avoiding animals.
8. …Using both experience and knowledge to inform lines.
9. …Knowing when to hang it up.
10. Art is for the birds, flamboyant types, but I couldn’t stand to let it go, the craft, the gaggle, so they kept flappin’ until I ended up in Manhattan where all of the artists live.
11. Was it better the way it used to be,
12. When we could all speak telepathically,
13. With no need for science, religion, or math,
14. Because we knew everything, and knew not to ask?
15. «We are circling around in the night and are devoured by fire » : I have no time, I have no more time, I am the burn, and I am elsewhere. We do not have enough of one life to taste what this entire universe harbors, every opportunity must be ceased.
16. get it out of your head
17. look
18. digest
19. execute
20. mock
21. be kind
22. primal
23. artificial
24. mislead
25. misunderstand
26. misrepresent
27. not always a wall
28. multiple
29. Everyone interprets truth differently.
30. Believe in something.
31. Love someone.
32. Love something.
33. Eat healthy.
34. There are people who manipulate. Avoid these people.
35. Treat people with respect.
36. Everything ok?
37. Hey, are you back yet?
38. What’s up?
39. Are you alive?
40. What do you want to do?
41. What’s going on?
42. Where are you?
43. What do you mean, “I’m not sure?”
44. Why?
45. What is your reasoning?
46. What’re you doing tonight?
47. What the FUCK?
48. Where are you?
49. What do you want out of this?
50. Pay attention
51. Frustration is an opportunity
52. Become a ninja
53. Be ruthless about your intentions
54. Embarrass yourself
55. Wax
56. Notice what keeps you up at night
57. Appropriate the accident for your own intention
58. emancipation
59. alien
60. memory
61. mythology
62. Are you doing art work to satisfy yourself or please others?
63. One day, I’m angry at the world and decide to do whatever pleases me, weird, exotic, odd, and random.
64. Strangers pass by, cold, numb, without looking at me, without answering any questions, until I finally find out that word, that password, for any reaction----Pick a random one, say “I love you”, say “Je t’aime”, say “Te amo”.
65. Open the third door, I fell into the gap between times and places, a journey begins, different scenes are altering in front of me, until I catch the real one, the concrete one, something not an illusion.
66. Feel it.
67. I WANT TO MAKE THE KIND OF ART I WANT TO INHABIT. I WANT TO STOP STUMBLING OVER CONCEPTS I WANT TO MAKE A SPACE FOR CONCEPTS TO BREED AND MULTIPLY AND DISSOLVE.
68. I WANT TO MAKE ART TO GET STUCK IN. I WANT TO STICK YOU.
69. I WANT YOU FORGET I WAS EVER THERE AND GET LOST IN YOURSELF. I WANT YOU TO PUT YOUR EAR TO STONE & OPEN YOUR HEART TO THE SKY EXCEPT NOT AS ANNOYING.
70. Language is death. Art points beyond itself.
71. THAT BLIND FARMER ONCE TOLD SKI THAT CHORE BIGGEST CRIME STUCK
A RAISIN IN THE SHADE MY BRAVE LIT TIL ENGINE [TH] AT COULD [STOP] THE PARTY UP HIS RALLY [ING] HAND EDUCATION
TO FRUITION ON MY PARTION BE TWEENS LIKE TO SUCKLE AND CU DDLEPUDDLEPU BURP SNEEZE NO
72. The history of the present institution is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these artistic minds. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. The Academy has refused enough freedom, the most wholesome and necessary for the artistic good.
73. Her Majesty
74. Trying to Not fall off of the back of bicycles..
75. This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2OdPDEG6aQ
76. Also This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHf7TD4qwjk
77. Also This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELxeSadruMI
78. Being Hilarious
79. Being Super F*cking Hilarious
80. Being Quiet. Chocolate Jesus. The Jerk. "You mean I'm gonna stay this color"
81. ONE LINERS
82. Everything about this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI8NuFAETMQ
83. It takes courage to follow one’s intuition and creativity but the rewards tend to be great. I like the sense of experimentation and collaboration in art. You can try something and fail or succeed, and look at the work of someone who had the same idea, and what they did with it: you’re never alone in your explorations.
84. Just need to learn to see it.
85. Photos - camera is eye.
86. No significant alterations though. (Where is the line drawn? Is there one?)
87. We all see things differently anyway. Who’s to say someone doesn’t already see it that way?
88. Closeups.
89. Me. For me.
90. Not creating - altering.
91. an event that is different from real life makes you think about "real life"
92. the opening as a performance, the exhibition is its afterlife and the objects are the artifacts
93. artist as producer, organizer, catalyst of object-making environment
94. MAKE 1 GOOD PAINTING
95. The object carries the story of how it was made but it is also beautiful, it can travel independently. The value of how it came to be is now inextricable from an object. So the object is a story.
96. the audience came freely but now they are trapped
97. CHOICE
98. lead me by the hand, spoon-feed it to me
99. "Trooping into her apartment as individuals, her subjects nonetheless left behind likenesses that formed groups along its walls and ultimately a crowd"
100. and then THAT happened
101. The way that you show it relates to the initial experience: if you were there, you know. if not you're still cool
102. אותי זה מעניין אז אותך זה יעניין
לא -- רק אותי זה מעניין. ואם אני רוצה שזה יעניין אותך אני צריכה לעניין אותך
103. Debris/piles of stuff/leftovers
104. Thigh Masters
105. Consumer Culture
106. Fabio, spokesman for fake butter
107. Reality TV
108. Disposable pop culture
109. Contradiction
110. Sweating to the Oldies
111. Amish livestock auctions
112. Interchanging Vowel Sounds
113. Whoever designs the packaging for generic laundry detergent
114. Plastic Surgery=New Media
115. Departures without arrivals
116. Unreal/ uncomfortable/ untrue
117. Eye sore
118. Eyeball
119. Delineate conditions of the seen
120. Absent arrivals
121. Looking and seeing
122. Modes of seeing
123. Is color that important?
124. Non-color dreams:
125. The continuous life span of found objects: object-hood
126. Found identity
127. Sexuality in excess
128. To Do / To Don’t Do:
129. Overanalyze
130. Overreact
131. Be stubborn
132. It’s not my fault
133. Learn to drive
134. Repeat mistakes
135. Be pissed
136. Forgive
137. Judge
138. Read literature
139. Let it go

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

AA: There is Nothing to See So We Look

We look. Action is driven by desire. Desire is premised on a lack. If we possessed the object of our desire, we would no longer desire. We would no longer be driven to look. We would rest, inert. Movement would cease…this would be death, negated being.

We desire to be. We recognize that we are incomplete (anxiety). We desire completion, certainty. We desire communication (with an other or with a beyond). This we is the we who are artists and the we who are thinkers and students and romantics and people who go to museums and people who go to church and people who take drugs and people who believe in rules and people who don’t believe in rules and people who believe in anything and people who want to believe in something.

This we is the we who look (action verb, ongoing). The we who try to see.

Can we find what we are looking for in art?

No. Well, maybe. Yes, I think, if art changes the way we see (or hear, or feel).

I wanted to make a video this week. I wanted to but I couldn’t make a video this week because I don’t know how to make the video I need to make. I am trying to make this video. I am in the process of figuring out how to make this video. This is my project. Ask me about Georges Bataille.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

What Happens? (AA)








Take a thing and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and put it next to itself and put it next to flesti and get lost.


Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Prompt 1 (AA)


















A moment of disappearance and reappearance in Yvonne Rainer's 'Trio A' (pirated).