2. Class times
VA602001
Lecture Wednesday 9.00-10.30
Tutorial 10.40-11.30
3. You need…
A green course book for notes on assessment
To be able to use Moodle
All lecture Powerpoints, all tutorial reading texts,
all assessment details are on Moodle as well
The course SMS Code is VA602001
All assessment tasks are submitted to me through
Moodle drop box
If you have problems with Moodle go to
http://moodle.op.ac.nz/mod/book/view.php?id=6
4. First assignment due
Assignment 1: Illustrated written assignment: ‘My
Identities’, 750 words
15 March 4 pm
Send through Moodle drop box
Help with Moodle?
http://moodle.op.ac.nz/mod/book/view.php?id=6&cha
pterid=12
5. Anna Maria Maiolino. Desde A até M (From A to M),
from the series MapasMentais (Mental Maps).
1972–99. Thread, synthetic polymer paint, ink,
transfer type, and pencil on paper, 49.8 x 49.5. The
Museum of Modern Art
A reminder –
don’t forget drawing
Audio-ink: http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/209/2063
7. EmaTavola
Subtitle
‘An Homage
To
Aotearoa’
This link has flikr images of other works by EmaTavola and from VASU: Pacific omen of Power
http://www.flickr.com/photos/colourmefiji/2881369347/
10. FridaKahlo, Self-
portrait with Thorn
Necklace and
Hummingbird, 1940,
University of Texas at
Austin
Self-Portrait dedicated to Dr
Eloesser, 1940
http://www.fridakahlofans.
com/c0350.html Milagros are in the form of the
part of the human body a person
http://www.fridakahlofans wants to be healed, placed on
.com/c0360.html altar of the Saint they pray to.
11. Lois White, Ode to Autumn, 1945
Oil on board 595 x 396
Private Collection, Auckland.
Self-portrait as allegory
13. Giddens 1: The Self as a
Reflexive Project
We are not what we are, but
what we make of ourselves.
(Which becomes ourselves)
Building/rebuilding a coherent and
rewarding sense of identity (but…
unpack those words ‘coherent’ and
‘rewarding’)
From Anthony Giddens, ‘The Trajectory of the Self’, in Identity: A Reader
(London: Sage, 2007), pp. 248-266
15. Reflexivity
‘Art, together with other socially
transformational forces, may try to initiate
social change, or be used to reinforce social
cohesion, to mark a perceived heritage. At the
same time art is itself altered by the very social
changes or cohesion it is, in part, responsible
for setting in motion or maintaining in active
discourse. Perhaps we may speak of a
mutuality of social and artistic interactions.
Artists are under the influence of social
structures and developments at the same time
as they are trying to influence them.’ Stupples
16. Things to Think About
How might you create an
image of ‘What you are’,
‘What you have made of
yourself’, ‘What art is’, ‘What
art has made of itself’
‘But what about
altermodernism?’
17. Putting ourselves in (an altermodern) context
Nicolas Bourriaud, 2009 Altermodern
POSTMODERNISM IS DEAD
A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in
its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodernculture
Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live
Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe
Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now
starting from a globalised state of culture
This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing
Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between
themselves
Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural
landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of
expression and communication
Remember – ‘nomadism’. http://www2.tate.org.uk/altermodern/explore.shtm
18. Laura Cumming
The Observer, Sunday 8 February
2009
Altermodernism, if I understand it, is
international art that never quite touches down
but keeps on moving through places and ideas,
made by artists connected across the globe
rather than grouped around any central hub
such as New York or London. You might take the
worldwide web as a model and think in terms of
hyperlinks, continuous updates and cultural
hybrids. It is most definitely postcolonial,
transitional and to some extent provisional, but
what it is not, …, is a movement.
19. Let’s get the genealogy
clear
The Modernist Trajectory – Modern Art releases the mind
and hand from the conventions of the past Academism
Modernisation equals progress
But the 20th century – that of Modernism/Modernisation-
was a disaster
Postmodernism rejects the binaries of Modernism but is
still ‘progressive’
Postmodernism is in the minds of a few when the world is
hell bent on ‘development’, a development that is
destroying the planet
Not Postmodernism but Altermodernism – what we are
21. Micah White
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/88/birth-of-
altermodern.html
‘And now, entering a new era of humanity where
postmodernity is slipping into altermodernity, we find
that the binaries we rejected are not only blurring but
finally collapsing. Unable to say with any certainty what is
real or virtual, human or animal, organic or genetically
modified, some wish to resuscitate again, but this time
with nostalgia, the failed antimodern project of shattering
distinctions. While the chorus – composed now of
cyberpunks and activists joined by capitalists and
technocrats – rejoices in the indistinguishable difference
between online and offline, organic and synthetic, man
and machine, the most crucial distinction of all – that
between resistance and complicity – is collapsing as well.
Unless we can discover a way to critique the system
without furthering the system, we shall be lost.’
23. Giddens 2:
‘The past forms a trajectory of
development from the past to
the anticipated future’ (but
isn’t that Modernism and
Postmodernism? Where has
that positive outlook gone?
Does the ‘alter’ hide a fear/a
confusion/or bravely look at a
reality?)
24. Remember Benjamin’s take on Klee’s
Angelus Novus
Why does everybody (everybody?)
read Benjamin now and his take on
Angelus Novus?)
25. Think…
How does the past act as a
creative trajectory for your
past…and anticipated
future?
Or are you entirely in the
present?
Self?
26. Giddens 3: The reflexivity of
the self is continuous and all
pervasive
27. Giddens 4: Self-identity
Coherent
Presumes a narrative
‘Like any other formalised
narrative, it is something that has
to be worked at, and calls for
creative input as a matter of
course’
28. Chuck Close
Mark (1978 - 1979), acrylic on canvas. took fourteen months to complete, was
constructed from a series of airbrushed layers that imitated CMYK colour printing.
29. Chuck Close
Close suffers from Prosopagnosis,
also known as face blindness,
in which he is unable to recognize faces.
1988 also paralysed from neck down.
30. Giddens: 5: Holding a
Dialogue with Time
durée – on-going time
Longue durée – the long term
32. ‘And this is precisely what you do, you send them an email,
download a track to your phone/mp3, get a map to where to go,
get a time and syncronizeyour clock with them. Don't hear the
track before you go, it spoils things (they say).
You show up at the place in the map, at the time they tell you,
with the track and a partner (I did it without partner). The
performance starts at the hour, through your MP3, the music and
voice narrating what is happening on the street,
and then gradually you have a place in the performance itself.’
33. As If It Were The Last Time
‘As if it were the last time’ by Duncan Speakman, uses the
concept of the subtlemob.
“Putting on a pair of headphones you find yourself
immersed in the cinema of everyday life. As the soundtrack
swells, people in the crowd around you re-enact the social
world of today. Sometimes you’re just drifting and watching,
sometimes you’re creating the scenes yourself. This is no
requiem, this a celebratory slow dance, a chance to savour
the world you live in.” Duncan Speakman
altermodern.blogspot.com
34. As If it Were the Last Time
Re-telling space, time and participation
‘What the performance did, and did so beautifully well, is that it gave
its participants a narrative. Furthermore, it gave the participants the
possibility of re-narrating the event, among themselves, through
twitter, in the videos, through blogs and so on. In that sense for me it
fulfilled some of the altermodern features very well. I was impressed
by some of the comments, they were very reflexive, intelligently
articulated, felt, and involved. …, it was good for the streets, the
urbanity of our lives.’
‘Three altermodern features: the atomisation of emotional
experiences, the performance impact on 'time' itself, and the re-
narrativisation of the stories met also the transformance of space, a
theme that I feel, altermodernity is exploring further and further as it
moves on.’
35. Intensity Duration
For Henri Bergson duration is not an objective
mathematical unit
How do we experience ourselves through/in
time?
How do we see the self through time?
How can we express these feelings/senses
creatively?
36. Giddens 6:
‘The reflexivity of the self
extends to the body, where
the body…is part of an
action system rather than
merely a passive body.’
40. Jenny Saville
‘I have to really work at the tension between
getting the paint to have the sensory quality that I
want and be constructive in terms of building the
form of a stomach, for example, or creating the
inner crevice of a thigh. The more I do it, the more
the space between abstraction and figuration
becomes interesting. I want a painting realism. I try
to consider the pace of a painting, of active and
quiet areas. Listening to music helps a lot,
especially music where there’s a hard sound and
then soft breathable passages. In my earlier work
my marks were less varied. I think of each mark or
area as having the possibility of carrying a
sensation.’
41. Lucian Freud - Self-Portrait,
Naked Man with his Friend 1978-80, 537 × 468
Lucian Freud died in2011 aged 88. There was a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery,
London in 2012. http://lakhimich.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/lucian-freud-portraits-review-of.html
42. ‘JUST WHO does Lucian Freud think
he is? A bit of a devil, on the evidence
of his most recent self-portrait.
Painter Working, Reflection is Freud
turning the tables on Freud: the
observer observed; the painter of
nudes painted in the nude. It is not a
pretty sight. Freud looking at his own
reflection sees a pallid satyr getting
on in years, palette in one hand,
palette knife in the other. Self-
observation is tinged with self-
mockery. Painting himself, the painter
acknowledges his own mortality.
Under the glare of an electric
lightbulb in a barely furnished interior
he looks himself in the eye.’
43. Giddens 7
The role of art as a self-
actualising agent
Self-actualisation is understood
in terms of balance between
opportunity and risk.
the tendency to actualize, as
much as possible, [the
organism's] individual capacities
44. Self-actualisation and art
– limits?
Do these ideas
apply to all fields
of art – painting,
sculpture,
printmaking,
textiles, jewellery,
ceramics,
photography, the
electronic media?
Wouter Dam
45. Giddens 8
The moral thread of self-actualisation – authenticity – being
true to one’s self
‘One has to take several different shots of a subject, from
different points of view and in different situations, as if one
examined it in the round rather than looked through the
same key-hole again and again.’ Rodchenko
46. Giddens 9
Life course – a series of
passages
Picasso –
Self-Portraits
1896, 1901, 1972
47. Giddens 10
Identity – Ema
Tavola
internally
referential/kee
ping the
integrity but
seeing the
range and
change
48. Anna Maria Maiolino. Desde A até M (From A to M),
from the series MapasMentais (Mental Maps).
1972–99. Thread, synthetic polymer paint, ink,
transfer type, and pencil on paper, 49.8 x 49.5. The
Museum of Modern Art
