Social Media and the Autobiographical Archive

Saw Life in a Day recently, which sees footage shot on the same day from every corner of the world collated in an uplifting and fascinating film. It inspired some interesting thoughts about YouTube as a vernacular repository of memory, and an infinite one at that. The film seemed to have the same focus as the BBC’s Mass Observation project from the 1940s, in that documenting the seemingly banal everyday occurrence reveals a lot about a society. The juxtaposition of different societal practices from a vast range of countries and cultures rendered those revelations even starker. The effect of technology on individual autobiographical practices is undeniable, as demonstrated by YouTube (and indeed other social media), where, technology permitting, literally anybody can immortalise any event. The autobiographical spaces enabled by digital technology are startling. The rise of the camera saw many critics reading photographic equipment as an insurmountable barrier between the self and the event, despite the photographer’s seeming attempt to capture the event for their personal archive. Perhaps now with the emergence of endless digital autobiographical repositories, our mindset has actually altered irrevocably, to the point where we often partake in events with such digital spaces in mind. Wandering around an art gallery with one’s imminent blog review in mind, for example. Not sure what the answer is, but it is definitely an interesting issue with vast repercussions for personal and infinite social posterity. Times change and lives end but the digital archive remains. With the inexorable rise of vernacular repositories of memory, Derrida’s study of archive fever seems increasingly relevant.    

Apocalyptic Scottish Skies

Charred ruins

West pier ruins

Went to Brighton recently and was drawn to the charred ruins of the old pier. The pier frame is now a charcoaled link to the city’s past. But why is it so alluring? Architecture, of all the arts, plays a particular role in public life. It is ever-present in the daily lives of a city’s inhabitants. But it is unusual to see ruins and dilapidation as a feature of modern urbanism, as is the case in Brighton. The Renaissance saw the beginning of the integration of the past as a prominent and identity-sculpting feature of the present, resulting in the rise of archaeology and artefact collection. Anxious of change and charged with emotion, intuition and imagination, the Romantics contemplated the past and its urban traces. Ruins that are allowed to remain are deemed positive contributors to national identity and the perpetuation of myth that sustains it. It seems, then, that there must be something in the existence and allure of the Brighton peer ruin, bar the aura associated with the patina-tinted memories conjured up by structures from the past. What is it?

Tessa Farmer at the Saatchi Gallery, London

Saw Tessa Farmer's miniscule sculptures at the Saatchi Gallery this weekend. Reminded me of miniature medieval memento moris with the mix of decay and vitality. Could have stared at them for hours.

Sohei Nishino, 'The Diorama Map Series', Michael Hoppen Gallery

 The re-imagined cityscape of an urban flâneur. 

Sohei Nishino’s immense photographic dioramas reify an arresting fusion of past and present, expanse and detail, indexicality and fiction. Like a modern-day flâneur, the Japanese artist trod his way through major global cities, taking thousands of photographs spread across hundreds of rolls of black and white film. He then returned to his studio where he developed the film, dissected whole images and pieced selected fragments together and finally reshot the collage to form his urban topography of memory. Each diorama integrates prestigious landmarks into the wider cityscape. The concrete repositories of history and institutional memory are displayed alongside images selected by the artist for personal or aesthetic reasons, entrenching his personal representation of memory in the reconstructed physical landscape of the city. The  ‘strange tissue of space and time’ the philosopher Walter Benjamin associated with the aura of an artwork seems particularly appropriate in a description of a work that is both strikingly (post) modern in its fragmentary deconstruction and reconstitution process, yet displays elegantly archaic elements reminiscent of pictorialism; at a glance the diorama series resembles the hand-drawn maps of times gone by.  Monumentality and finesse combine in an auratic re-experiencing of the city.  

Norwegian Wood, Anh Hung Tran

Stunned by Anh Hung Tran's adaptation of Murakami's novel. Not sure the transition from text to screen worked; Murakami's interior monologues were translated into beautiful shots of nature and expansive terrains, rendering the characters' development so silent as to be sinister. Beautifully subtle and delicately sculpted imagery meant that almost each and every frame could stand alone in a photographic exhibition, for example. The intensity of imagery, silence and music (by Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood) made this 1960s Japanese love story one of the most harrowing and beautiful cinematic experiences for a while.

Click here to listen to a interesting podcast about Norwegian Wood

Modern British Sculpture, Royal Academy

Tony Cragg's 'Stack'

Mixed review of the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at the Royal Academy. Initally drawn in by the juxtaposition of abstract and figuration, monumental and heroic in the first room. A striking introduction to the range the medium encompasses. The age and detail of the pieces in the second room were engaging. Particularly liked the Egyptian quartzite figure of a baboon dating from around 1350 BC, on loan from the British Museum for its combination of carving finesse and block materiality.

Quartzite figure of a baboon

Interesting exploration of the glorification of monarchy in the ornate statue of Queen Victoria, a tangible memorialisation of national pride, and beautiful display of Moore and Hepworth's romanticism. Of particular interest was the painted red steel piece by Anthony Caro for what it represented in the development of sculpture, with its lack of pedestal and abstract industrial quality, as explored in William Tucker's essay. Fantastic narrative of development up until this point. Disappointed from here onwards however. Left with the frustrating and alienating feeling that I was either missing something, I didn't "get it", with the notable exception of Tony Cragg's 'Stack', or that I was being force fed some sort of abrasive social commentary, as in Hirst's 'Let's Eat Outdoors Today' or Gustav Metzger's wall of page 3 girls. An overall success nonetheless.

Hirst's 'Let's Eat Outdoors Today'

Gabriel Orozco’s 'Empty Shoe Box', Tate Modern.

Orozco's 'Empty Shoe Box'

Is the status of ‘artwork’ contained within the piece or endowed by the surroundings? Is the avant-garde reduction of art nearing the void? These are just two questions inspired by a recent viewing of Empty Shoe Box. Orozco’s piece seems in a similar vein to Marcel Duchamp’s presentation of a glass vial containing Parisian air to an American art buyer in 1919. Is Orozco challenging our perception of the exhibition space or audaciously rehashing an old, provocative joke based on the artistic void and modern consumption, which incites mild confusion and veiled indignation in the average viewer? Whiteread’s sculptures are explicitly concerned with the space between and within objects but they satisfy the viewer’s desire to see something unfamiliar, not merely an unusual context for the most banal of objects. In his focus on containers, including his lift installation, modified Citröen DS and of course Empty Shoe Box, is Orozco alluding to the notion of the artist as a receptacle for creativity? Is he playing with space, as his does in much of his spatially-centred work including the installation of lint hanging delicately and dustily in its own exhibition room? Or is he commenting on the effect institutionalising any object within an exhibition space has on the object, endowing it with a certain distance that gives it value? Whatever his message, it is certainly an interesting one.

Orozco's 'La DS'

Happy Italian memories

Livorno, 2008

Banksy, the inherent contradiction of myth

In the run up to the Oscars, which saw Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop nominated for Best Documentary Feature, 3 new artworks appeared in the LA cityscape, created by anonymous guerrilla graffiti artist Banksy.  But there is an inherent contradiction in the work of the carnivalesque creative, who relies on the very myths he purports to challenge. Banksy’s optical references to the institutions he mocks rely upon a general knowledge and acceptance of that myth. The image of two British policemen embracing is one such example. The bastions of the British institution are denoted through a visual representation of the accessories, or signs, that surround them including batons, handcuffs, helmets and so on. For many, these institutional signs signify trust, honour and protection and combine to form the myth of the British policeman of which Barthes wrote in Mythologies. Such myths are the backbone of contemporary national identity. These immediately recognizable state representatives are undermined in carnivalesque spirit due to the situation in which they are presented, which contradicts the myth in general acceptance. In the same way that he requires the existence of public space as provided by the institution as the canvas for his graffiti, the effectiveness of the work relies on the existence of the myth to function, depending on its acceptance in order to undermine it. His pre-Oscar subversive works seem more an intelligent act of marketing than a subversive message. 

Portobello, Scotland. February 2011

Are museums our new churches?

Listen to Alain de Botton's ideas here

La meglio gioventù, Tullio Giordana (2003)

Watch the beautiful trailer

Dipped back in to La meglio gioventu' this weekend. This 6-hour long visual masterpiece, originally aired on state television and later released in cinemas, going on to win the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2003, follows the lives of brothers Nicola and Matteo from the mid 60s to 2003. It gives the most beautiful overview of forty years of Italian history, authentic enough to make even those of us born long after the period in question nostalgic. Faultless visual references to times gone by are underpinned by a delicate soundtrack that enhances but never intrudes.
The brothers are university students of the ’68 generation and have had the same institutional and familial education but as they age, their lifestyles and morals diverge. While Nicola embraces the archetypal ’68 experience – protesting and travelling – Matteo enters the army and later the polizia, embracing institutional rules and regulations (his violent treatment of suspects under questioning is reminiscent of the events leading to the death of Pinelli, which inspired Fo’s morte accidentale). Interestingly, cultural heritage and the arts are what seems to bring characters together. Nicola and Matteo are reunited in Florence at the time of the floods in ’66, Nicola is first drawn to his wife as she plays the piano and while she is in prison sends her music scores, Mirella takes photographs of Matteo which are presented in an exhibition, viewed by Nicola after Matteo’s suicide, which ignites their relationship . The most stark distinction though lies between Matteo and Nicola’s wife Giulia, who enters into the Brigate Rosse (the Italian terrorist brigade), later leaving her family and becoming an assassin. The divide in the ’68 generation between those distrustful of institutional power or authority of any sort, and those searching for rules and regulations – a division that, arguably, led to the anni di piombo in Italy – is represented in these two diametrically opposed characters. Interestingly, the event that marked the culmination of this tumultuous period, the Moro Affair, is absent from the film that was released on the thirtieth anniversary of the tragedy. Is this symptomatic of desired national amensia? Who knows. But learn Italian and watch this stunning overview of national memory, please.