Alix Pearlstein Lecture

Alix Pearlstein uses her background in sculpture and installation as well as dance and choreography to create performance based videos.  During the lecture she showed a range of her work, from videos dating from 2000 all the way up to 2008.  Although the themes and narratives of her performance videos vary greatly, they all speak to the immediacy of live performance, and the importance of gesture.  Pearlstein also mentioned how she tends to always shoot her videos in blank white studios, thereby removing any context from the work.  Instead, she relies on the gesture of the actors in the video to provide the context to the viewer.  After watching several of her videos, especially the ones that have multiple and simultaneous channels, I began to get a sense for the choreography and rhythm that were inherent in them.  The first video she showed was titled “Two Women” and had a cut out of a naked woman interacting with a real man.  The camera angle distorts the scale, so that at first glance the magazine cut out seems just as big as the person, and it is not until the end that the true size of the object is revealed.  I found this piece awkward and hard to relate to, although I could definitely see how it fits into performance based art.  The last videos she showed were more recent and both filmed with multiple channels, which I found to be more interesting.  The overall quality of the film seemed better, and with a larger ensemble of actors and a distinct wardrobe, I began to see the cinematic and theatrical overtones apparent in her work.  However, since these videos were meant to be seen as an installation, I think perhaps something got lost in translation, and that I could appreciate them more if I saw them as Pearlstein intended.

Thursday Posting: Function

Role

“The Function of Buildings looks at the way in which the design of a building is informed by its function and the demands of climate.”

            -- RIBA architecture.com

Harper, Jennifer.  “In America, form no longer follows function; survey finds trend in architecture.”  The Washington Times.  29 November 2005, A09. 

In Jennifer Harper’s article she discusses how at one point in time form actually followed function in America’s public buildings, which revealed a building’s purpose and enhanced a sense of community.  However, according to Harper and research done by Ohio State University, that time is long gone.  Harper quotes Jack Nasar, an urban planner who directed the research done at Ohio State University.  According to Nasar, “if form follows function, then you should be able to look at a building and have a good idea of what goes on inside.”  Nasar believes that when citizens cannot “read” a building, “cities descend into impersonal, confusing places.”  If form were to follow function, Nasar states that “it should make life in the city more pleasurable and comfortable, and help people figure out where they are.”

This article interested me because in my work I am concentrating a lot on different types of buildings and architecture, and removing certain elements of the buildings that thereby disguises their primary function.  However, reading this article brought up an interesting fact that most of American architecture at the time is not designed around its specific function, giving most of the buildings we see an anonymous quality, with or without removing certain elements.  

Monday Post: Josef Schulz

Josef Schulz was born in 1966 in Bischofsburg, Poland.  He attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy and was taught by Bernd Becher and Thomas Ruff.  Currently he as an exhibit of large-scale color photographs at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York.  The series is titled Form, and it is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States.  According to NY Art Beat, “The works begin as traditional, analogue photographs of halls, factories and storage facilities taken with a large-format camera. Images of common, mass-produced, industrial structures are then stripped of any individualizing elements through digital manipulation.”  Schulz is careful to remove any logos or signs of wear, as well as doors and windows, turning these modern structures into “idealized versions of their original design concepts, without context or scale” (NY Art Beat).  Removing these elements also removes whatever function or use these buildings could have, thereby reducing the buildings to “relationships between color, shape and form” (NY Art Beat).  Schulz is careful to include a wide array of colors in his photographs, some which are so bright and sterile that his photos almost look they were digitally simulated.

Artist Website/Gallery:

http://www.josefschulz.de/sachliches_index.htm

Artist Interview:

http://www.josefschulz.de/textklerrkx.htm