Week 3- Hussein Chalayan

Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

I found the work ‘burka’(1996) very interesting because of the original meaning of it, the burka was at first supposed to be wearied by the prophet’s wifes, the texts has been changed 20 years ago and the burka’s been applied to every wife.  in my opinion, the Muslim have set the sexuality as a taboo but they seem more attracted by it than any other religions, for example the burka is suppose to hide the beauty of the women and save their dignity when she is outside, but it has transform the women as an object just against man jealousy. I think that’s what Chalayan wanted to show, a kind of perversion of the idea of the burka.
 Her second work ‘afterwords’(2000) could be more considered as a fashion work, it seem like she has tried to experiment another kind of fashion by playing with architectural materials and new technology such as metal cylinder, plastic bubbles, and lights.     

Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996

                          Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000

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2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

I think an artwork still an art even if it’s for selling products, some advertisement on TV are actually very concerned in art. In some way commercial business may have influenced her and his work that he couldn’t entirely express himself, advertisement have only one gold, convince the audience of a good product.

His work ‘The Level Tunnel’ is 15m long and 5m high and it’s made of different materials. This work can be experimented from the exterior or blindfolders  inside, the viewer from the inside follow a path that have different levels like “a cut through landscapes”, he’ll have some sound of a flute made with a bottle of vodka activated by a sponsored floor.  He succeed to create at first an artwork instead of a selling product installation because if we don’t know that the sounds made are from a “vodka flute” or that the inspired landscape is used to purify the water used in the vodka, this piece of art could be in a museum.

3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

Post-Modernism, Ai Weiwei and Banksy

 Post-Modernism

This week's ALVC tutorial covers Post-Modernism. Use the ALVC texts and definitions from the internet to define the term and answer the following questions;

1. Define Post-Modernism using 8-10 bullet points that include short quotes.

      . Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles

      .Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.

       .The term postmodernism is used in a confusing variety of ways. For some it means anti-modern; for others it means the revision of modernist premises.

      .Postmodernism is not easy to define [...] different postmodern thincker may have different opinion, and different fields may have somewhat different definition of postmodernism.

       .there are both pros and cons when it comes to postmodernism

       . it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.

           . Postmodern Elegy makes liberal reference to cubism, surrealism, and expressionism without adhering to the stylistic purity of modernism or striving to advance any singular ideology.

2. Use a quote by Witcombe (2000) to define the Post-Modern artist.

“the post-modern artist is ‘reflective ‘ in that he/she is self-aware and consciously involved in a process of thinking about him/herself and society in a deconstructive manner, ‘damasking’ pretensions, becoming aware of his/her cultural self in history, and accelerating the process of self-consciousness.”

3. Use the grid on pages 42 and 43 to summarize the list of the features of Post-

Modernity.

Postmodernism and modernism are really opposed, as seen from the grid I can say that postmodernism is limitless. Limitless in the way that the new technology allows us to play with new media and involve the audience to the work, the emotions that can be expressed (such as irony or seriousness). There are no longer high and popular culture but an “hybrid” cultural form. Postmodernism also play with surfaces and images and don’t pays attention to the “Depth”. The ideas of this movement sticks around social, cultural pluralism and disunity whereas modernism which was focused on unity.

4. Use this summary to answer the next two questions.

5. Research Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's 'Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola logo'(1994)

in order to say what features of the work are Post-Modern.

'Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola logo'(1994), Ai Weiwei

 

Ai Weiwei dropping a Han Dynast Urn.

Ai Weiwei is “the Chinese conceptual artist, architect, photographer, and curator - loathed and loved for his human rights activism - is the courageous voice needed in today's repressive China” (Lucy Birmingham 2009). Indeed Ai still have problems with Chinese authorities, as seen in most of his work present activism, this is “To protect the right of expression is the central part of an artist's activity. ... In China many essential rights are lacking, and I wanted to remind people of this.”(Ai Weiwei) and that’s what we can see in the two work presented, 'Han Dynasty Urn’ and ‘Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola logo'(1994).both work were made to mock at the authority, ‘Han Dynasty Urn’ is a composition of three frames in which we can see the artist breaking an 2000 year-old vase, a cultural importance. The work ‘Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-cola logo’ represent an old vase on which there is a Coca-cola logo, this is ironic and challenging, ironic in the way that China used to be communist and Coca-cola is an American logo and challenging because of the authority, I think what happened with his parents declared all this activism.    

6. Research British artist Banksy's street art, and analyze the following two works by the artist

to discuss how each work can be defined at Post-Modern.(Use your 
 list from point 6.)

'Flower Riot', Banksy

Los Angeles (2008), Banksy

Banksy is an English graffiti artist, his work is mostly a mocking view of modern life.  His two work presented ‘Flower Riot’ and ‘Los Angeles’ are both postmodernism, ‘Flower Riot’ involved a hooligan (painted in black) throwing flowers (coloured), it’s a kind of irony, the action of the hooligan is very strong but by adding the flowers it’s turned the idea into an opposite way of violence.

The work ‘Los Angeles’ is also ironic, it give the idea of American consumption, involving a Cro-Magnon man holding a fast food tray.      

    

http://science.jrank.org/pages/10807/Postmodernism-Postmodernism-in-Literature-Art.html

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Postmodernism.htm

http://anthropology.ua.edu/cultures/cultures.php?culture=Postmodernism%20and%20Its%20Critics

http://www.michaelnewberry.com/av/post/post.html

http://artzinechina.com/display.php?a=180

http://mrod.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/ai-weiwei-dropping-a-han-dynasty-urn/

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/32223/who-is-ai-weiwei/

http://www.798district.com/798/en/artists/a/aiweiwei/01_bioexh/

WEEK 1- Nathalie Djurberg's 'Claymations'.

'Experiment' (2009) Venice Biennale

Nathalie Djurberg's 'Claymations'.

Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg's intricately constructed claymation films are both terrifyingly
disturbing and artlessly sweet.

The new works created for the Venice Biennale explore a surrealistic Garden of Eden in which all that is natural goes awry.

She exposes the innate fear of what is not understood and confronts viewers with the complexity of emotions.

Nathalie Djurberg was awarded the silver lion for a promising young artist at the Venice
Art Biennale 09.

(http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/6886/nathalie-djurberg)

Research Djurberg's work in order to answer the following questions;

1. What do you understand by the word 'claymation'?

By “Claymation” I understand Clay motion or even Clay animation, it is a stop motion scene that involve characters, landscapes and environment made in clay. A scene of 20 sec will be the product of 500 pictures in which the characters moves a bit in each pictures to have a synchronised movement.

2. What is meant by the term 'surrealistic Garden of Eden'? and 'all that is natural goes awry'?

I think the terms ‘surrealistic Garden of Eden’ and ‘all that is natural goes awry’ reveal an unthinkable world that ‘Garden of Eden’ might express for the people. We usually think of a colourful, beautiful or even makes feel in peace when it is related to the ‘Garden of Eden’, but Djurberg’s work doesn’t make us feel this way, the landscapes and displays she created is full of dark colours or in a weird state such as rotten flowers, moisture, etc...

‘all that is natural’ make me think that it could be interpreted in two ways: that the garden of Eden might be like that because of Adam and Eve, when they ignored God’s words and broke the balance between the good and the evil or tit’s going to be like that.

3. What are the 'complexity of emotions' that Djurberg confronts us with?

I think the emotion that Djurberg confronts us with is shocking and hurting, hurting in the way that since we were born the image we have got of the Garden of Eden couldn’t be sad, colourless, lack of pleasure. We have built up a totally opposite world, seen in advertisement or bible. 

Djurberg make us also think of an predictable world there are no says of what happened to the Garden after Adam and Eve leaved it...

4. How does Djurberg play with the ideas of children's stories, and innocence in some of her work?

I think that Djurberg’s work may have in some way the idea of children’s stories by using clay as the base of the work, one of the first tools the children used to play with.

The environment created in “the Garden of Eden” could be related to “Alice in Wonderland” where everything is oversized fascinate children 

5. There is a current fascination by some designers with turning the innocent and sweet into something disturbing. Why do you think this has come about?

I think those designers found out that by turning something innocent into something disturbing catch the mind of the audience because it actually goes into a conflict of the innocent of the object that make us fell.

Because it shocking, sometimes rejecting, the audience will have the chance to think in another way

6. In your opinion, why do you think Djurberg's work is so interesting that it was chosen for the Venice Biennale?

I think that the main reason that Djuberg’s work was chosen for the Venice Biennale is the idea of turning the innocent into something disturbing, and by creating the “Surrealistic Garden of Eden” it may have more attracted attention because it challenge not only us but most importantly the bible.

7. Add some of your own personal comments on her work.

I couldn’t watch all scenes of her work it was for me too shocking, and I didn’t understand the scene when the character is cut apart it was like she’s been raped by her own body part. But I really liked the idea of a dark side of the Garden of Eden.

http://www.historel.net/biblecor/06adamev.htm

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/6886/nathalie-djurberg-experiment-at-venice-art-biennale-09.html

http://www.ikitmovie.com/59/claymation.htm