Exercise 4

Amalia Ulman's Excellences & Perfections

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Response: Mark Fischer

I think what Mark Fischer is talking about can directly relate back to part of the article by Claire Bishop. Both address how nostalgia arises in the wake of future. Where Bishop paints the inherent nostalgia created by obsolescence as a hindrance to technology and art, Fischer similarly looks at how even imagining the future can create a different sort of nostalgia for the present; a "what would/could have been" which dulls the future of now. Fischer calls the result of referencing or comparing the future, "the slow cancellation of the future", which I find a bit dramatic. I don't think a disappointment that heavily weighted needs to be associated with not obtaining the outcomes of an imagination. As long as there was something enjoyed or consumed from any facet of what was imagined, there was ultimately a gain.
Read more

Capitalism and Claire Bishop’s “Digital Divide”

Although Claire Bishop’s “Digital Divide” is an interesting interpretation of Contemporary Art’s interaction (or for her argument’s sake: disavowal) of the digitization of the human existence, I do not wholeheartedly agree with it. I agree with her claim that the sudden attraction of “old media” for contemporary artists in the late 1990s coincided with the rise of “new media,” particularly the introduction of the DVD in 1997. But to be honest, this constant “return” to analog ways of doing things as a sort of “nostalgia” has happened constantly with the introduction of new technology. She claims that the art world has not really interacted with the issues that the new digital world has created. However, I believe that this digitized experience is so ubiquitous, so ingrained in us now that the need to explicitly reference this existence in every work would be unnecessary. Instead, what I found most interesting about her argument was her connection of the art world’s resistance to trul...
Read more

1984 + Rewriting the Past

First, in response to Soda Jerk's "The Anarchivist Manifesto," I feel like it's important to dissect the title before I begin analyzing the work in itself. The title is a pun by combining the words "anarchist" and "archivist". An anarchist is an individual who rejects hierarchies deemed unjust and advocates for their replacement with self-managed, self-governed societies based on voluntary, cooperative institutions. In addition, an archivist creates and maintains an archive, essentially controlling the past. The title pun hints at the crux of Soda Jerk's argument which emphasizes not only how much power images have over the past, but also even more so, how much power the individuals wield that derive the accepted narrative from those images. In response to this concentration of power, Soda Jerk advocates for the complete dissolution of this, by trying to stir a "rebellion" of the masses through the active interception, rejection, an...
Read more