The Photographer, The Laborer

Yesterday at Lawrence University I went to a lecture given by Frank Lewis. He spoke about the history of photography, specifically about how photography is a medium that historically has appreciated and noticed the worker. Photography's capture aspect has the ability to freeze the worker and fixate on his/her craft. By doing this photography can emphasize the laborer as an individual, which goes against how I think a lot of people consider the worker "a piece of the machine". Frank Lewis mentioned that the worker was portrayed now not only as an extension of the machine, the worker is much more. The worker has his/her craft and is empowered and appreciated. Frank Lewis also alluded to the idea that because photography has historically emphasized the importance of the worker, photographers were the first artists that weren't necessarily thought of as a part of high culture. The lecture gave the image of photographers and their subjects holding a very noble role in the history of art and society. These ideas brought me to think about the role of the photographer today and how technology has given pretty much any asshole with a digital camera and a Flickr account the chance to call themselves a photographer. I think that degrades the idea of the photographer and the parallels that Frank Lewis illuminated between the photographer and the worker. However, I think that there is still a separation between the photographer as a true artist (whatever the fuck that means) and the asshole with a digital camera; I got the chance to see some really great artwork in an exhibition following the lecture. Two of the artists are my teachers, Julie Lindemann and Johnny Shimon; it was really great to see some of their artwork featured in an exhibition about the worker within photography. They have a feel to their work that presents an image of the worker as a real master over their craft. They had a book written by Julie Lindemann and Johnny Shimon that featured a lot of their work laying out in the exhibition and I got a chance to read a little of it. I was very interested in one part specifically that talked about how the older worker more readily identifies him/herself with his/her craft whilst the younger worker has aspirations for something "more" or at the least an identity separate from their craft.

Technology and Society

Raymond Williams wrote an article entitled, The Technology and the Society, in 1972. I was expecting the article to be about the content of television, movies, magazines and other media is linked in with the culture at the time of publication. The article was much different than that; it was about the causes and effects of technology and how it changed the notion of social communication. Williams discusses how technological advances happened as a result of many different developments (military uses and the ability for corporations or the state to broadcast to people are among a few). Williams nicely put it this way: "It is not only that the supply of broadcasting facilities preceded the demand; it is that the means of communication preceded their content". This idea brings my assumptions about the reading forward and I can place my own thoughts in this style of thinking. While the television was invented long before 1972, Williams brings up an interesting point. The ability to broadcast was there before people had to worry about what they were watching. And since the introduction of of new technologies in social communication, people have pushed the envelope along the lines of how much sex can I sell? How much violence can I get away with showing? Yeah, we want to see these things and we should have the choice to see them, but we only care because we know they exist on television. I'm not advocating censorship, I'm just saying theres a bunch of dumb shit out there.

Furthermore, I watched some experimental videos in my class. After reading Williams' article, I can see how these artists have used the existing technologies as a major on their content. William Wegman is an artist who clearly spends time contemplating the role that television and similar video technologies have in society and he creates art that fucks with our expectations of what video should be. But that's the idea for a lot of experimental film makers I think. I dont think that cheapens it, they obviously have more of a message or direction if they're good, but this is something film makers look at. I think this is a weird video, but his dog stuff is kind of weird to me:


I dont think it's fair to look at experimental video by writing it off as dumb shit. But it's not fair to give dumb shit the title experimental art. This particular video might be close to a gray area.

Decasia

Mash-ups are basically remixing existent art (sometimes other media that isn't considered art) and presenting it in a different, often augmented way. A lot of people thing this idea is really dumb, and that the original creator should be the only person who takes credit for their productions. I understand this argument, but I think that it is naive to hold this stance. I don't find the literal usage of other artists work much further away from an artist being extremely inspired by another artists work. I dont mean to argue that mash-ups are that simple either, they can be much cooler than that. I watched the film, Decasia, by Bill Morrison, and it was awesome. Basically, he took found footage and made an experimental film that brings the nature of decay to the forefront of our minds through the use of mashing together decaying old film and juxtaposing these obscure scenes together with an intense rhythmic soundscape. I found the movie extremely compelling and often terrifying. The sound was so intense and perfectly mixed with the video; it was really impressive. My initial response was that the film was like a David Lynch short film mixed with a Godspeed track. William Burroughs wrote an article about mash-ups and i found his position about how they are beneficial to the art world very similar to my own. Mash-ups can be used in a variety of mediums, even across mediums. The concept of the mash-up is an easy way towards understanding what experimental art can be. Rearranging finished products, or really anything, and reproducing it with your own artistic vision is very cool.

New Photos Uploaded

I've created three sets of ten images that focus on or respond to the notion of surveillance in contemporary life. You can check them out on my Flickr page. My first set is Appleton in autumn; for people that live in Appleton, we know that it's a pretty quiet place. I find the images in this set somewhat comical because they show authority figures and signs that presume dangerous or "bad" things go on here, or would if they weren't around to stop them. Within this set I like the photo of the sign near the park and the text that says "turn em' in" because I think it shows this theme very effectively. In my next set of photos, I took pictures at Project Bridges, the preschool I work at. At a preschool surveillance is obviously important because we teachers use surveillance as a means to help kids. Some of the pictures represent this theme, but others are just more playful images that use surveillance in some other way such as kids taking care of animals or surveying/considering the idea of time. Finally, for my last set I took pictures at the Fox River Mall. The text in the first photograph sets up the mood for the entire set; it's about marketing and the individual's lack of a personal identity that comes from being forces to self-survey from the lens that marketing culture imposes on the consumer.

The Internet as a Host for Artwork

This last wednesday, at Lawrence University, Rachel Crowl gave a talk about Web 2.0 and spoke a little bit about what it means to be an artist that experiments with new media. For clarification on what exactly Web 2.0 is, here's a video presentation that is awkward but informative.



Rachel Crowl deals with technology issues that the Lawrence administration encounters, I'm sure she wouldn't like that description of her job, but I didn't pick up enough on what exactly she does for the school. She definitely is really busy and is extremely knowledgeable about technology, the history of the internet, and was overall very informative about all this stuff. She spoke about blogs, such as the one I'm writing on now, and told us that they were the first form of democratized self-publishing. I think this makes sense and it definitely does put some power into the hands of individual people in the sense that an individual can post things to the web for free, you dont have to be a writer for a corporation. The social component of contemporary blogging (or related to blogging) websites acts as what Rachel Crowl called the glue that holds them together and makes them successful. What does this mean for artists? Advancements in technology and the user-friendly nature of the internet has given rise and vast amounts of popularity to websites like Flickr, which host photography. Other websites host other art forms, but photography, or photos of art are probably the most easily recognized art forms on the internet. This gives everyone (artist or not) an equal opportunity to post their content to a host website. I asked Rachel a question along the lines of, doesn't it frustrate you that this puts an artist's work on the same level as a 13 year old's family vacation photos? Outside of how many views a person gets, it's difficult for many uninformed people (maybe someone with an untrained eye) to distinguish between art and bullshit. And even that (the views) doesn't mean all that much; marketing yourself and playing into the game can get you more views than actually having a unique artistic outlook. Should the artist feel an aversion to these types of host websites because it puts their work on a level that seems to degrade it on some level? Rachel Crowl responded by assuring me that it's not the platforms that suck, it's the people that post shitty content. And it's you the viewer who ultimately has the choice whether to look at something or not. And you know, I definitely agree that there's a lot of stupid shit out there for viewing, but I still feel like using an online host that is so immensely populated by users kind of takes a little bit away from my work. It becomes so user friendly and so accessible that my artistic intent, (not to mention the technical skills that art can show) isn't even noteworthy anymore. Overall, I don't like the message that you put out there by using a host website for your content; it's like I'm advertising to someone, I don't like that. Rachel Crowe definitely had an attitude that said "technology is here to help us, to make things easier for us". And for the most part I agree, but I still often feel like it makes it easy for the everyday assholes to try and give the world a message that I don't want to hear. Furthermore, I think that it makes it easy for malevolent authorities to keep tabs on us. Maybe that's delusional, but whatever. I don't really feel that comfortable participating in this technological charade. I really think that it's only as addictive as it is because the internet is a gratification based host and the user can hide is some amount of anonymity.

Dan Leers Talk

So, Dan Leers is a curator at MOMA, he graduated from lawrence, and he's a normal human being. Basically Dan Leers gave a talk today at Lawrence and told us his life story (as it exists on paper), with photos to back it up, over the past 10 years. Why would I want to hear about a 30 year old's life story just because he went to the same school I did? Maybe because he knew a lot about a photographer that has a lot of images that are very thought provoking, compelling, and overall just amazing (Henri Cartier Bresson). And if Dan Leers had given a talk that focused on Cartier Bresson's work or travels (or even better, both), I would have been interested. But really, what the fuck am I supposed to respond to? He told us what he did (again i emphasize, on paper, because he didn't tell us anything else about his life than what he could put into a resume) over the past ten years, all the while praising MOMA and Lawrence University. While MOMA is one of the best, if not the best, modern/contemporary art museum, Dan Leers is not an artist, he has (seemingly(from the talk)) a very uninteresting perspective on anything, and is a curator, which I've learned from his talk is simply a combo between an "artist's bitch" and "MOMA's whore" (putting that in quotations only serves the purpose of trying to become exempt from being an accused masogynist). He hangs artwork and learns about what that artist's life is like... and he gets paid for it; he's got a cool job, but it seems like he's nothing close to an extraordinary human being. The best part of the presentation was that I learned Cartier Bresson followed "the political action" of his time. Also I saw some projected images I hadn't seen before, which I thought were really great. Overall I don't want to hear how great Lawrence is or how fun Dan Leers' job is.

I have no videos or photos that I think are relevant... except a description of how to become a curator.