Micro project 2 / Research Critique 1

This micro-project was done along with my group members, Karen and Jiajun. Held in the classroom, we invited the class to interact with Karen, who has low self esteem about her body. Karen sits in the center of the room, holding a sign that told the audience to write what they thought of her body on the corresponding body parts.

In this case, Karen acted as the canvas as the audience wrote on her. The underlying message we were trying to convey was about body image which was inspired by Karen’s lack of self-confidence.

This is an art piece which fulfils several characteristics of D.I.W.O.

As quoted from Marc Garret’s article,

“It challenges and renegotiates the power roles between artists and curators. It brings all actors to the fore, artists become co-curators alongside the curators, and the curators themselves can also be co-creators. The ‘source’ materials are open to all; to remix, re-edit and redistribute, either within a particular DIWO event or project, or elsewhere. The process is as important as the outcome, forming relationally aware peer enactments. “

 

In our art piece, there was a sense of openness as the artwork and material was open to all in the room. Both the artist and audience became co-creators as the audience’s contribution was greatly needed to form the final piece and the process was important to see the how Karen’s body filled with comments over time.

If we were to compare this to traditional art, the audience paid a huge part in this piece as the artwork wouldn’t have been completed without the audience’s participation. On the other hand, traditional art can be done single-handedly by the artist himself at his own time.

There are similarities in our art piece to those discussed in the crowd-sourced examples. In Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut’ piece, the viewers each came forward to cut a piece of Yoko Ono’s garment and everyone who was in the room could see the art happening live. Similarly, our art piece allowed the audience to come up individually and write on our friend, Karen while everyone in class could see the comments live as they were being written.

The difference, however lies in the type of medium used, and the message that was given out. Our artwork spoke about body image, which was influenced by Karen’s self-esteem. Therefore, the medium and message differs as it is very much dependant on the artist’s own experience and narrative.

The process of our crowd-sourced work can be viewed here: