Notes on art by Nathaniel Katz
Monday:
Network Landscapes 1-6
Collegiate Teaching Preparation 5:30-6:45
Tuesday:
Permission to Write: Thesis Prep 1-4
Performance Independent Study 6:30-9:30
Wednesday:
Digital Performance Lab 12-1
Digital Performance 2-5
Grad Seminar 6:30-9:30
all of the readings that i’ve managed to accumulate over the semester are here:
dm.risd.edu/~nkatz/reading
i’ve been working on a couple of new videos this week. the first is one where i stand and hold my open laptop with elevated outstretched arms for about 5 minutes until i can no longer hold them up and drop my laptop. in the second i am sitting on my legs holding my laptop on my lap for 15 minutes until my legs fall asleep and i try to get up to see if i will drop my laptop. they both continue to deal with my relationship to my computer through testing my body’s limitations. in teri’s class today, jessie shefron, the dean of graduate studies, was our guest critic and i showed the two videos as well as photos from my inside the computer performance. most of the comments seemed to focus on the production values and the vocabulary of video art. both of which are two really important areas that i need to spend some more time studying and thinking through in making the videos. other really good comments were about conceptual choices around the objects (computers) being evoked. jessie said something really important in the end, that was about how if the representation of every element is considered throughout then, these questions don’t arise and one has the ability to have that (don’t remember what she called it) moment where it is directly about the ideas in the piece and we experience it.
notes from my crit on 3/20 with veronica wiman, daniel peltz and teri rueb
Notes for Nathaniel
Intro:
Performance piece (injection of knowledge) suggests a clinical environment, while the furniture (bench + pedestal) piece made later resembles and represents that of a library environment.
What has been done so far can be seen as a ‘pilot’ installation, as a testing ground.
Veronica: Why put it in the storefront? Why not in the gallery? Who are you trying to target, and also what are your thoughts in bringing in the public?
Nathaniel: To function as an effective critique, the shots must be made available so that anyone can walk in and get it. Accessibility is important. The exchange of money, and neccessity of money for education as an exchange, and the availability of the shots to be ‘sold’, i.e. to take advantage of.
Veronica: I read it as a gesture, an institutional (academic) critique. How do you want to talk to the public? Who can ultimately understand Foucault within that short exposure to the piece, and how sincere are you in wanting to see this through?
Nathaniel: The bookstore environment works, and I wanted it to be a symbolic gesture of sincerity, and wanting Foucault to say something.
Veronica: How important do you measure the value of the injection? The value of genetic knowledge? I understand that we wouldn’t know the effectiveness of the genetic improvements after injection, but I am more curious as to how far you want to take it.
Daniel: What is your level of sincerity in your desire in wanting public access? It is almost like the ideology of knowledge vs art, and are you trying to express this gesture by giving access to the public?
Teri: I feel that putting it in a storefront doesn’t neccessarily make it accessible to audience, although your expression of sending the message of the desire of knowledge is not lost.
Mark: But does that mean we can do it with any commercial product instead of the shots? Like fast food with a Foucault book, for example.
Teri: Is it a library, institution? Are lines being crossed, and is it intentional?
Veronica: That might be fine (that lines get crossed). It brings it to a further level, provides public with more complex thoughts. There is the concept of power, who we are in our practice to define or communicate what power is. I’m curious about your constant references to Foucault, and the constant restaging of this power.
What are your thoughts on site-specific work, and working with the specificity of location?
Nathaniel: This functions as art, and if it were to be taken to a public location some things will have to be changed.
Veronica: Yes, and what is the local knowledge that will affect your work?
Nathaniel: My first presentation was done in an art school context, which is why I started with Foucault, and was central to this project happening.
Veronica: (on Getting Inside My Computer) The instruments as tools all have power over us, but through the recording of your actions it becomes used as an archive.
Daniel: (on GIMC) I like your juxtaposition of how your decision to place just the empty comoputer case in the room changes and reinforces the piece.
(on Chess) Where does the user come in? The positioning of the laptop, chessboard and orientation of the table/chair looks odd, and almost disallows the viewer to participate.
Veronica: How do you feel about Mac computers? Why that particular brand?
Nathaniel: Was a conscious decision, as the idea of the built-in cameras gives a less complicated aesthetic. The status lights of the cameras in the computers is important as well, almost as if through the lights we invoke a closer, more direct communication with the computer.
Daniel: You should also think about the relationship of old tech/new tech, the idea of external cameras and internal ones.
Veronica: Some references: Charles Sandison, and Ian Carr Harris.
readings
2/26
Aristotle from Poetics
Hegel, GWF from Introduction to the Philosophy of HIstory “Freedom, the Individual and the State”
Marx, Karl from Capital “Chapter one:Commodity” and “Chapter two:Exchange”
3/1
Heidegger, Martin from Philosophies of Art and Beauty “The Origin of the Work of Art”
Benjamin, Walter from Illuminations “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Scarry, Elaine “On Beauty and Being Just”
3/15
Lewontin, RC Biology as Ideology
Harraway, Donna “A Cyborg Manifesto”
McRobbie, Angela, “Feminism, Postmodernism and the ‘Real Me’” in Media and Cultural Studies
3/22
Baudrillard, Jean “The Precession of Simulacra” in Media and Cultural Studies
Hall, Stuart, “Encoding/Decoding” in Media and Cultural Studies
Gilles Deleuze and Guattari, Felix, “From A Thousand Plateaus” in New Media Reader
4/5
Bush, Vanevar “As We May Think”
Heidegger, Martin from The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays “The Question Concerning Technology:
Virilio, Paul from The Art of the Motor “The Data Coup D’Etat”
4/12
McLuhan, Marshall “The Medium is the Message”
Max Horkheimer and Adorno, Theodor W. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” in Media and Cultural Studies
Jameson, Frederic “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” in Media and Cultural Studies
4/19
LeFevebre, Henri from The Production of Space “Social Space”
Critical Art Ensemble, “Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance”
Viola, Bill “Will There be Condominiums in data Space?”
4/26
Kaprow, Allan “‘Happenings’ in the New York Scene”
Cage, John from Silence. “Lecture on Nothing”
Kahn, Douglas from Noise, Water, Meat “John Cage: Silence and Silencing”
Eshun, Kodwo from More Brilliant Than the Sun
5/3
Borges, Jorge Luis “The Garden of Forking Paths”
Casares, Adolfo Bioy, The Invention of Morel
Beckett, Samuel from Shorter Plays I, “Play Without Words”
Queneau, Raymond, “Six Selection by the Oulipo
reading list:
2/28
Rosalind Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde,” 1981 in The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths.
Frederic Jameson, “The Deconstruction of Expression,” 1984, New Left Review
3/7
Craig Owens, “The Allegorical Impulse: Towards a Theory of the Postmodern,” 1980 in Art After Modernism
Douglas Crimp, “On the Museum’s Ruins,” 1987 in On the Museum’s Ruins
3/14
studio visits
3/21
Edward Said, “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community,” 1981 in Critical Inquiry, vol. 9 no. 1 (1982)
Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, “Who Claims Alterity,” 1989 in Remaking History: DIA Art Foundation Discussions in Contemporary Culture
3/28
spring break
4/4
Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine, vol. 64, no. 5 (1990)
bell hooks, “Art on My Mind,” 1995 and “Representing the Black Male Body,” 1994 in Art on My Mind, Visual Politics
4/11
Lucy Lippard, “Mapping” in Mixed Blessings, 1990
Ralph Rugoff, “Beyond Belief: The Museum as Metaphor,” 1995 in Visual Display, Culture Beyond Appearances
4/18
studio visits
4/25
Arthur C. Danto, “Painting, Politics and Post-Historical Art,” 1997 in After the End of Art
Dave Hickey, “Air Guitar” and “This Mortal Magic,” 1997 in Air Guitar
5/2
David Levi Strauss, “Can You Hear Me? Re-Imagining Audience Under the Pandaemonium” 1999 and “A Ferocious Philosophy,” in Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics
Hal Foster, “This Funeral is for the Wrong Corpse,” 2002 in Design and Crime
5/9
studio visits
5/16
Raphael Rubinstein, “Painting as Past,” ARt in America, March 2003
Johanna Drucker “Violating the Old Taboos of Fashion, Amusement and Sentimentality” and “New Monumentality and the Now Sublime” 2005 in Sweet DReams, Contemporary Art and Complicity
Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway?” 2006 in Cosmopolitanism, Ethics in a World of Strangers.
The Urban Cow Dilemma
Project Proposal
Nathaniel Katz
Concept Description
While traveling in India I kept asking myself this question: Given an assumed consciousness, whether I would prefer to be a cow that lives in the crowded polluted city with the knowledge that I am revered and loved by all and (barring accident) will live out my full life span; or whether it would be preferable to live in the outdoors and enjoy that fleeting freedom with the knowledge that I will be butchered shortly to be used for beef.
In the Urban Cow Dilemma, I will purchase two cows from a beef raising farm nearby. The cows will then “live†in the gallery for one month (the duration of the performance). I will as a result become a farmer for the duration of the month and care for the cows daily. The cows will be separated from each other by a wall and each cow will experience their one month differently. Both cows will have a webcam set up in their room and visitors can remotely log in and check on the situation and well-being of the cows. For cow A, aside from having online visitors watch her, the visitors can also video chat with her with their images projected onto a large visible wall in the room. Visitors will be encouraged to shower the cow with positive loving words. Cow A’s experience will be that of human/digital love. Cow B meanwhile will have no direct human/digital experience, instead she will have continuous live projection from the actual farm where she was purchased from. Her experience will be that of digital freedom and commraderie with her fellow cows, all of whom will be butchered in the near future.
Throughout the month a team of “experts†will evaluate the mental, emotional and physical conditions of the cows to determine the impact of their experience.
By living in the gallery the cows will become art and as a result will be of value. The cows will be auctioned on e-bay toward the end of the month so that the person who will purchase them will own a work of art and will have rescued the cows from inevitable butchering.
Growing up, my father was a dairy farmer and I spent many days in his company and in the company of cows. Through this time I inevitably developed a soft spot for cows and a belief in an inherent intelligence or consciousness of their situation. My interest in cows was further awakened while teaching at the Putney school in Vermont during the past two summers. The school has a working farm on campus and the students are encouraged to take part in the daily chores as well as go and draw and paint the animals. Finally, the previously mentioned experience in India brought about the question of consciousness of condition in cow intelligence and by association human intelligence.
Conceptual Research
1. Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1969. Twelve live horses. Exhibition in underground garage, Rome.
2. Joseph Beuys’ coyote performance
3. Hans Hacke raised chicks for the duration of an exhibit as a meditation on time.
4. Rauschenberg, Elgin Tie
5. Richard Serra, Live Animal Habitat
6. Luis Benedit
7. Timm Ulrichs
8. Yayoi Kusama
9. Eduardo kac (both the bird piece and Alba)
10. Janine Antonini cow photos
Concern about PETA, animal rights, etc.
Technical Description
1. Permissions from Public Safety and PETA inspection need to be arranged.
2. The gallery will have to be prepared to host two cows for one month:
a. Laying hay on the floor
b. Preparing the space for cow waste
c. Buying the appropriate amount of food.
d. Creating a barrier section for visitors to view the piece
3. Webcams will be installed in both cow rooms
4. A website will be set up for visitors to log in and watch the cows.
5. iChat account will be created for cow A-Human interaction
6. Webcam will be installed in the cow farm and set up to broadcast during daylight hours for cow B.
7. Projectors will be installed in both cow rooms.
I read this in an interview with Bruce Nauman, my comments are at the bottom.
“There was a period in American art, in the ‘60s, when artists presented parts of works, so that people could arrange them. Bob Morris did some pieces like that, and Oyvind Fahlstrom did those political-coloring-book-like things with magnets that could be rearranged. But it was very hard for me to give up that much control. The problem with that approach is that it turns art into game playing. In fact, at that time, a number of artists were talking about art as though it were some kind of game you could play. I think I mistrusted that idea.
Of course, there is a kind of logic and structure in art-making that you can see as game playing. But game-playing doesn’t involve any responsibility – any moral responsibility – and I think that being an artist does involve moral responsibility. With a game you just follow the rules. But art is like cheating – it involves inverting the rules or taking the game apart and changing it. In games like football or baseball cheating is allowed to a certain extent. In hockey breaking the rules turns into fighting – you can’t do that in a bar and get away with it. But the rules change. It can only go so far and then real life steps in. this year warrants were issued to arrest hockey players’ two minutes in the penalty box wasn’t enough. It’s been taken out of the game situation.â€
(327-328)
Breaking The Silence: An interview with Bruce Nauman, 1988 (January, 1987) Joan Simon. From Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words, Edited by Janet Kraynak. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003
I think Nauman brings up a couple of interesting points in relation to new media art making. One is the idea of giving up control, especially relevant in interactive or web based art, where the user’s input is integral to the functioning of the work. It requires a surrender of control over how or what the work will look like and it necessitates a re-definition for the artist of their relationship to the work. I, like Nauman, have a hard time to some extent, with the idea that the work will form in the hands of the viewer/user. On some level it allows a surrender of responsibility which I think is essential to making work and putting it out there in the first place. It also allows for less decisions to be made (as they are to be made by the viewer/user).
On the other hand, I think it can be done so that the entire context for the interactive or game playing is done by the artist and the viewer/user is navigating a very controlled environment where any decisions or input that is made is reflective of the larger idea that the artist has outlined in the context.
The question then relates to simulation games (like Sims) where you have the illusion of freedom but it’s defined within criteria that have been programmed with a certain ideology. As opposed to a more anarchic open source simulation like second life, where codes of behavior may not be programmed but emulate “real” society. This leads me to ask an even larger question of whether we are free at all if we are operating within a society where the rules or codes of behavior are so clearly outlined.