Cell

Rongze Dai

Analyzing the Monad

The way of existence

www.mavirus81.blogspot.co.uk

Immortals

Seeing is Believing

Developing our interest in the relationship between conflict, looking and art and building on WAR as EVER! that many of the MFA group saw in the Nederlands Fotomuseum earlier this year, Seeing is Believing is a continuation of our exploration of those concerns.

Made for Who told you so?! #2, Truth vs. Organisation, Seeing is Believing is a black & white silent double screen slide projection, whose starting point is the photograph by Pete Souza of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton watching the killing of Osama bin Laden with members of the US National Security team and which brings together re-worked visual material and textual extracts and quotations. Through a process of association, interpretation and digital manipulation we have created a work of art that reminds us through reference of our troubled relationships with conflict, ideology, power and truth.

Opening this Friday 08 June, in WHO TOLD YOU SO?! #2 Truth vs. Organisation at Onomatopee. 

http://www.onomatopee.net/project.php?progID=d5381378fc26032879f2d84ff94a9c62

Seeing is Believing, detail, double screen projection, 2012, Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen

'Mapping the Future' report is out!

Delighted to let you know that Ken Neil's Correspondent's Report is now available on
http://www.publicartscotland.com/news/correspondents-report-on-mapping-the-future-of-public-art-in-scotland

This extensive text is a selective report on, and a discursive response to the Mapping the Future: Public Art in Scotland symposia, and draws directly from in-conference discussions to set down speculative principles and recommendations for the future development of public art in Scotland.

Mapping the Future: Public Art in Scotland was a collaboration (initiated by Tracy, Edwin and  Graham; MFA Course Director and Module Leaders) between Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee and the then Scottish Arts Council, now Creative Scotland, through its public art development programme PAR+RS (Public Art Research + Resource Scotland). 

http://www.app.dundee.ac.uk/vrc/mapping/

Reflections on A Matter of Process.

The constant process.

Irony: the fallout. The insertion of the examination process into an exhibition concerned with the process of art-making leads to a feeling of closure. Not with standing that you grow tired of looking at your own work, but it feels defined, boxed. The establishment of different modes of viewing which was such a fertile ground during the process of the exhibition making, becomes a tarmac car park, needing ripping up to allow new growth. - This was my initial feeling as I viewed with the distance of 3 weeks. But we’ve been through this before: "Try again, Fail again, Fail better."[1] Insert succeed if you will, neither exist after all.  

The experience of co-curating an exhibition, is productively, an unnerving experience. Particularly so in which your own visual practice is present, not only your curatorial practice, straddling both in this instance. Considering other artist’s work within the context of your own practice and the consideration of that within a specific environment is an eye-opening experience. This led to me wondering how the work existed without this interaction previously. But it did and does exist without the gallery or context of examination, through the artist’s subjective experience of society. But that’s to be expected, isn't it? Personal expression is a human right...right?

 
Viewing the work being viewed is always a tense moment, but discussing the work as it’s viewed by your peers undergoing the same process, leads to a hugely different point of view. This is undeniably advantageous. However I suspect we listen to our peers more closely because they’re more likely to say what we want to hear. Or is it perhaps just because we’re speaking the same language? 

We the MFA’s, I believe, have seen our work develop in ways which would not have occurred were the works not put in that space. It gave us the space to imagine ourselves outside the parameters of a MFA program, or outside the insular artist studio, (perhaps a microcosm for the insularity of the art world.) Now the difficulty lies in bring this spirit from the gallery institution model to the every-man. How do you talk it, not tell it?  

[1] Samuel Beckett's Worstward Ho. 1983.

Share the RAGTALE...

MFA student, Rowan Richardson, is currently interested in the possibilities that come from an artist’s engagement with the public.  Her current project, RAGTALES, is to begin with a fundraising event this Thursday and Friday- selling second hand clothes, shoes and costume jewellery- where she asks RAGTALES shoppers to "Buy a memory and make it yours." Some customer purchases will contain a link to a blogged memory of that item and all customers are invited to contribute to the blog when their purchase becomes a part of their own memories.

Join the event on Facebook where you can confirm your attendance and view taster photographs of the items on sale.