art

There are 2 posts tagged art (this is page 1 of 1).

Research Critique: Please Change Beliefs (1997)

Jenny Holzer, Please Change Beliefs (1997)

Upon entering the site, I was quite confused at what was the site about with the website changing a new quote every few seconds and the title of the work “Please Change Beliefs”. After exploring around, I realised that this website is about truism and how the public can vote and change the truism they believe in.

After clicking on the truism, I was brought to the next page where I can vote for the various truism that I believe in.

After choosing the various truisms, I was brought to the results page where you can see the number of votes for each truism. I felt a sense of familiarity due to its similarity to various social media like Instagram where users can hold polls to engage with their followers and poll sites like doodle where users can choose a date that they are free in this coordinates in group meetups.

Looking at all the quotes, I can’t help but curate imaginary scenarios in my head to form up the circumstances of each truism and to judge the justifiability of the quotes. This work intrigues me to ponder over whether our beliefs are facts and does it really hold true to everyone. For example, “Even your family can betray you”. While I can’t relate fully to this quote as I did not experienced this before, I can imagine the circumstances that this can happen and hence, this truism holds true.

Adding on, I always see art in the form of visual, performances and audio. With people defining this metascape as a internet art, I was confused at how should one define art? Technically, it does put forth an idea and thinking that is truism and it engages the audience with its input of one’s own truism and voting system, which parallels with the idea of most artworks. But the unique way of representation of this art piece really intrigues me and challenged the boundary of our definition of art. In my opinion, I am still in a dilemma, not due to me disliking or rejecting this work, but I find it interesting and excited that I am trying to evolve my own thinking to appreciate and understand internet art and many different forms of art. I am still in the phase of picking up new things as I go along and understanding the concept and gist of the art scene.

References: 

  • https://art.colorado.edu/hiaff/review4da6.html?id=116&cid=7
  • https://elmcip.net/creative-work/please-change-beliefs
  • http://gallery9.walkerart.org/midobject.html?id=10604

Please Change Beliefs: An Analysis

4D: Controversial Artists

Pompompom- Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

For our last project, we are tasked to do a research on controversial video, song or performance art. I don’t know why but the first thought that came to my mind was a MV called Pompompom by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.

This video mainly consists of nonsensical elements like broken arms and funky bright colours. I was one of the few people that witness the backlash it received when it first came out whereby people were saying that this video was a bad educational material for kids and should ban children from viewing it. However, it’s quite interesting that shortly after it was released, people actually start viewing this as an art and actually start liking it. Although it is out of the norm and quirky, I feel that to be able to incorporate a video with so many interesting elements and still create a strong constant dynamic is a great feat and admirable.

Drawing Restraint – Matthew Barney

DRAWING RESTRAINT (1987-present) is a significant and long-term project for Barney, in which he proposes art-making as parallel to athletic training: the development of form occurs through resistance. Begun while still a student at Yale, Barney was influenced by his background as an athlete and sought to foreground the physical body and its tensions in a studio practice.

http://www.ago.net/matthew-barney-drawing-restraint

One of the performance art that caught my eye from this series of Matthew Barney is Still. As shown above, Barney attempts to mark the ceiling and the walls while bouncing on a tilted trampoline or tethered at the thighs with bungee cords. He being an ex-athletic, tries to draw upon an athletic model of development in which growth occurs only through restraint. As a result, his muscle will encounter resistance, which becomes engorged and is broken down, and through healing becomes stronger. In my honest opinion, while I do understand his underlying concept to recreate an athletic’s body structure, however, I cannot fathom why he would want to recreate these performances through other mediums when he could go through the normal athletic routine to achieve similar results. Also, the whole series has been around for 3 decades which is I feel is a great feat to be able to hold on and continue performing.

Get Back- The Beatles

One controversial song is Get Back by The Beatles. The controversial with this song is that some said to be about getting back to your inner child and inner peace, whereas others believe that the tune is a covert attack on immigration in the United Kingdom. There are also some who say that this was meant for the xenophobic politicians and racists in England at that time. While I can’t comment much about the song as I do not have much knowledge about the situation and history then, I feel that this is an interesting example whereby a song can create such a huge commotion and discussion with different perspective and ideology.