Lecture # 2

The Dolls Live On: Eshu and Ibeji in Salvador Orisha Worship

I attended this lecture that was part of the symposium Yoruba Art: Continuity and Change.  The lecturer was John Mason, who is the director of Yoruba Theological Archministry.  In his lecture Mason explains growing up with these dolls while also explaining their background.  Mason grew up in Cuba with his mother and father who were both blind.  His mother made Eshu and Ibeji dolls, and because she could not see he occasionally had to help her with the finishing touches.  After explaining his background with these dolls, he discussed the process from which the dolls evolved.  To understand this process though he first had to explain how many women in Yoruba culture tend to have twins, but instead of viewing this as a miracle the women are shunned from society and their babies are discarded in the forest to die.  Often times the babies are put on the base of ‘sacred’ trees.  It is here that the process begins: the sacred tree, according to Mason, is the first doll.  From there the dolls can embody many different spirits.  Some of the dolls are seen wearing bands around their ankles. This is not just on dolls though, children and priests and priestess’s wear them too, to “keep them from flying away.”  Wearing these bands makes noise each time when the person walks, thus scaring away death. I found this lecture very interesting.  I have seen some of these dolls before but I didn’t know what they were supposed to represent, nor did I know anything about their background.  

Thursday Posting: Terror-proof buildings

Repellent

“Attempting to design a terror-proof building is the epitome of arrogance, a sense of hubris that deliberately ignores the boundaries of the human mind. We do this at our own peril by underestimating our enemies,” says Raymond T. Mellon, partner at a NY construction law firm.

Geoghegan, Tom and Casciani, Dominic.  “How to terror-proof shopping centres and other buildings.  BBC News.  15 Nov. 2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7095884.stm

In this article Geoghegan and Casciani discuss the UK’s desire to terror proof public buildings after the attacks on Glasgow airport and car bombings in the West End of London.  The article is divided by categories of buildings.  The authors go into depth about plans of terror-proofing airports, sporting venues, railway stations, shopping centers and nightclubs, and of course key political buildings.  Although these different buildings all require unique protection, the concepts behind protecting them from terrorists remain the same.  After learning that terrorists were planning on poisoning beer and burgers at football games, the Arsenal Football Club’s Emirates Stadium in north London designed their new building with security as their top priority.  Geoghegan and Casciani state in the article: “Emirates' strength, say officials, is that it has limited access to vehicles. The stadium's apron is ringed with subtle obstacles that would prevent a car bomb from getting near. Concrete planters and benches are deliberately placed to prevent a car weaving through them to reach the stadium itself.  Giant cannons, part of the club's insignia, can stop a moving vehicle. The architects placed the club's name in dramatic giant lettering at a critical access point. Those letters are not just there for aesthetic effect - they could stop a seven-tonne lorry.” 

After reading about the security of all the different types of buildings, there are definitely similar concepts used to strengthen security.  Using barriers to reduce car access close to the buildings, using non-fragmenting materials to reduce shrapnel in the case of an explosion, and having security screening outside of the building to have a better opportunity of identifying a security risk without compromising the security of the buildings.  Not everyone is so sure about the idea of terror-proofing buildings.  According to the article, “Austin Williams of the National Building Specification believes it is contributing to the "death of architecture" because aesthetics are being sacrificed for the sake of precaution. Public buildings, he says, are becoming "fear of public" buildings.”

This article was very interesting to me in light of recently studying different types of architecture.  While I was aware that post 9/11 buildings are being designed to withstand terrorist attacks, I didn’t realize the scale on which this is being done.  Its not just skyscrapers that are being terror-proofed, its everything from shopping malls and grocery stores to airports and stadiums.  The subtle placement of planters and benches as a way of strengthening security really intrigues me, and I think I can incorporate this theory into my images. 

Monday Post: Loretta Lux

Lux was born in 1969 in Dresden, Germany.  In 1990 she graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich, with a major in painting.  Her big debut came in 2004 at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York.  According to Wikipedia, “The show put both Yossi Milo and Loretta Lux on the map, selling out and setting new prices never before seen from a new gallery.”  Lux is well known for her photographs of young children, which combine painting and digital manipulation.  Her photographs are manipulated in such a way that the children seem ghostly and disturbing, too large for their surroundings or too surreal.  Lux says about the children in her work, “I never allow then to wear their own clothes.  My work isn’t about these children.  You can recognize them, but they are alienated from their real appearance” (arts telegraph.co.uk).  Using Photoshop she manipulates the color of their skin and the scale of their bodies, making the viewer realize all at once that something is unnatural about these children. 

 

Artist’s website:

http://www.lorettalux.de/

 

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.yossimilo.com/artists/lore_lux/

 

Interview with the artist:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3638552/'I-use-children-as-a-metaphor-for-a-lost-paradise'.html

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

Thursday Posting: Removing Context

Elimination

“By removing any indication of function or use, the structures are reduced to relationships between color, shape and form.”

-Yossi Milo Gallery

Reid, Graham.  “Adrift in a Surreal World.”  New Zealand Herald.  23 Feb. 2005.

Graham Reid was the senior music writer for the New Zealand Herald for 20 years.  He now hosts his own music and travel website.  In his article he discusses the removal of context by photographer Loretta Lux.  Lux is well known for her portraits that she takes of children, which she superimposes onto made-up, fantastical looking backgrounds, letting the viewer contextualize the photographs as they see fit.  Reid explains Lux’s process, stating: “Lux's subjects, usually the children of friends, are dressed and sometimes given odd but symbolic props - a fish, a loaf of bread - then photographed under even, shadowless light. The results are faces and skin which have pale complexions and the visual resonance of porcelain. Then the work begins. Using Adobe PhotoShop software technology, Lux sometimes slightly manipulates the scale of the heads, hands or torso, and places the child's image into a plain backdrop which she may have painted herself.”  Reid’s article discusses the impact that the removal of information has on Lux’s series of photos.  By completing removing the children from their original background, she is eliminating the elements of scale as well as context.

I was first drawn to the work of Loretta Lux because I felt that her process of creating imagery was on the same lines as mine.  Although her work deals with completely different issues than mine, we are both making photographs by removing context and taking the image out of its original setting and into a new one.  This recontextualization is an important concept in my work, and it is interesting to see how different artists are using it.