On Monday, February 21st, I attended the Panel Discussion on Public Art in Cole Cinema. The discussion involved speakers from three different disciplines, including Lisa Scheer and Billy Friebele from Art and Art History, Diana Boros from Political Science, and Katie Gantz from International Language. Each professor gave a brief presentation about their perspectives upon public art, including the social and political implications of this art. The individual presentations were followed by a discussion with the student audience.
Professor Boros began the presentations by introducing the idea of public art and its role in the political sphere. She defined the terms to be involved in the discussion, such as public art on a whole, and its relationship with the audience. Public art is specifically placed in a venue outside of the museum, more accessible from the street to passersby. Boros argued that art in the public sphere, because of its availability to a wider audience, is overtly political in a way that museum-based art is not. Art presented in a public venue will be viewed by a wider, more diverse audience than a work in a traditional fine art setting; therefore, its interpretation will be based upon a more democratic, representative process.
Professor Scheer was the next speaker, who presented her own work, her process, and the overall considerations that go into producing public art. Scheer discussed her sculptures commissioned for public venues, including art made for airports, metro stations, and corporate buildings. These works were constructed to interact with their context, structured around the formal elements of the site, and artistically developed to represent the ideas embodied by the site.
Professor Friebele also presented the works that he developed for presentation in the public sphere. The majority of his work involved video or photographic documentation of common spaces, the media arranged on screens that would be visible from the street. Friebele’s work involves the depiction of common experience that may not otherwise be considered by occupants of the space, such as the videos recording a man’s legs walking the perimeter of the old Washington, DC. This work engages the public by confronting them directly by presenting common experience and locations in a new, unexpected way. Other works invite the participation of the public, such as the work which allows viewers to submit photos to be used to create a collage of DC. This choice to put executive power into the public’s hand is an example of the democratic potential of public art.
Professor Gantz was the last speaker, discussing the art of the streets- and the street art- in Paris. She contrasted the 19th century to the 21st century art throughout the city to emphasize the ways in which the city had been restructured to create a new identity. The 19th century involved the Haussmanization of Paris, in which wide boulevards were constructed to order the city, with great monuments placed at each end. Gantz proceeded to discuss the new, more individualized and small-scale works of art deployed around Paris in the late 20th and early 21st century. This latter art was constructed and placed around the city by a variety of artists, some of them prominent graffiti-artists, others anonymous innovators. Much of the art was politically and socially engaged, left in small traces throughout the city in a guerilla-style process of making statements. This culture of free expression by any means necessary is another example of the democracy involved in public art creation. |
Last Monday, February 28th, I attended Lewis Klahr’s video presentation. His was the third and final animation presentation within the Theatre, Film and Media Studies’ Series this semester. Like the previous two animators, Karen Aqua and James Deusing, Klahr’s work included short animated films, most of them experimental or nontraditional in content and narrative. Unlike the previous two, his animations consisted of animated collage. To create his films, Klahr cut out figures and shapes from magazines and comic books, particularly ones from his early childhood (1950s-1960s). He arranged these cut-outs and photographed them to create frames, moving them physically or digitally to create movement. The majority of the animation in the films was based upon the movement of the camera around the assembled scenarios, or upon movements of whole cut-outs within the scenarios. This is distinct from other animated collage (such as mine) in which parts of figures, such as limbs or heads, are individually animated, which evokes the illusion that the figures come to life. Indeed, most of Klahr’s animations involve surprisingly still scenes, in which the movement is the viewer’s own eye within the frame. Klahr arranged his collaged scenarios back to back as if they were scenes within his films; the relationship of these “scenes” was often unclear, because there was often no running dialogue or consistent narrative. Klahr set his animations to mainstream music sources, often older music to match the antiquated feel of the imagery he used. This connection to music often makes the series of still frames seem to shift into one another more fluidly.
Klahr’s experimentation with image objects and time were particularly interesting to me. Instead of cutting out concrete figures and using them as characters in his nontraditional narratives, Klahr makes several specific choices to emphasize the physical quality of the images/objects he animates. He often cut out photographs of people who were partially hidden behind another person or cropped by the edge of the page. In context, these figures look natural, but Klahr cuts them out and isolates them in his scenes, where they seem cropped, chopped and awkward. He also illuminates pages so that both layers show through, such as in his film exclusively portraying comic book pages. Often, he incorporates paper and objects outside of the magazine and comic book context, such as coins, fortunes from fortune cookies, and even a pinecone which leaves a water stain on the paper beneath it. Choices like these help the viewer understand the physicality of the work and the process behind it. In many of his films, he makes choices which modify the idea of time and the progression of events. Some films incorporate music which is played backwards and forwards, evoking a sense of play/rewind or a revisiting of events. In his work “The Nimbus Trilogy,” Klahr repeats images and sound in different order and combination to present related but distinct ideas. The second film in the trilogy, “Nimbus Seeds,” used the same imagery as the first film, “Nimbus Smile,” but used a different soundtrack. The final film, “Cumulonimbus,” used some of the previous sounds and images in a new order, as well as incorporating new ones. This repetition evokes a sense of disordered recollection. |
On April 20th, I attended the first opening of the Studio Art St. Mary’s Projects. This gallery opening and presentations showcased the work of Kathleen Overman, Allie Snyder, and Allison Yancone.
Kathleen Overman gave the first presentation. The work she presented was a collection of photographs, presented in several series of photographs. Many of the photographs were relatively small, black and white images depicting interior spaces and small still lives. According to Kathleen’s speech, this work was a departure from the majority of her previous work, which primarily depicted figures. She used her photography in the SMP as a way of getting in touch with her family home, which had been abandoned since both of her parents’ death in her adolescence. It was difficult for her to explore again, but Kathleen said that she used the photograph as a way of documenting her experience and movement through the house. Through the process of photography, she reacted to the items she came across as she went through the hat. She communicated with the camera as though it was a friend or another person in the room, allowing it to record her motion and emotional process.
Allie Snyder was the second presenter. She painted several large wooden panels with images derived from photographs. Initially, during the first semester, Allie explored photographs from her experience in Africa; during this second semester, she turned to photographs of her brother, or her and her brother. She was interested in digging deeper into photographs that were painful for her to look at because of the lost memories—her brother had died during childhood. She was also interested in photographs which were literally the only means of remembering someone, ones that occurred before her actual memories had formed. “Reproducing” the photograph was a way of confronting these events, or coming back in touch with those memories. Painting the images onto plywood so that the grain of the wood showed through in certain areas made them seem heavy and solid, large and weighty objects that have a presence on the wall. She often chose photographs that experienced a flaw of some sort, like a blur or movement—these indicated human error, like human movement, which made the images seem more personal. She cited Gerhard Richter, a famous photographic realist who used such blurry photographs for his paintings.
Allison Yancone was the last artist, this time working in a much broader array of media. She made series of prints, molds, and drawings that all explored objects in nature. The projects were placed on the wall in a series of small prints, or on the ground arranged in a rectangle. She explained that her project was all about forming a deeper relationship with nature through understanding an object in more depth. She chose the oyster shell as an object for its textural and memorial value. She said that it would not be sufficient t o simply collect and present actual oyster shells, but to create new ones, as a way of deepening her relationship with them. |