FRAIL: Toward a Future Art

Curators' Comments

2005-08-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

Creating an online art exhibition was a bit of a daunting task, at first: there is so much work being produced by artists (and others who haven’t troubled themselves with that definition), in different corners of the world – crossing themes, genres and technologies – and so few attempts to corral them into cohesive, focussed presentations.

In Michael’s and my previous efforts to edit, interpret and present work – in literary journals, film festivals and gallery exhibitions – we had the luxury of knowing that we were working in niches: an exhibition or a publication functions in a world full of other exhibitions and publications, many of them excellent in what they set out to do. But online we seemed to be working in a context that is mostly dominated by completely different impulses: the sprawling, catch-all art repositories, the technical showcases, the photographers’ galleries, and the adventurous museums who can afford to commission artists (typically established and bona fide in another medium).

We both knew that we had seen much good work, here and there online, but only a handful of curators and editors were providing the background and context that made us want to go back and see what they were going to come up with next. (Some of that handful are represented on our links page; others, regrettably, have given up the ghost.)

So we got up the gall to say: we are going to program only excellent work, work that appeals to us on many levels, work by artists who are clearly thoughtful about the world and their role in it. And we are going to talk about the work: explain what we think is going on, defend it and open ourselves and the artists to critique.

Geoffrey Shea

Flim

2005-08-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

Hell 3 (with Richard di Santo)

There is no doubt this is a dark piece, yet one i find strangely comforting. I'm not sure whether it's simply the soothing quality of Flim's piano countering the darkness and the void - not to mention the consumption of the vegetable-like form by a hirsute decay. So many things are at odds here. For example: Are the hair-like protensions a sign of decay or growth? Is this a cycle of life or the inevitable decline? Is the solitude of the organic form, isolated from its (any?) environment, a cause of dread or comfort? Personally i continually find myself confronted by such contradictions and conflicting emotions. But, whatever the case, let alone the artists' initial intentions there can be no question that Hell 3 conjures up an acute sense of temporality and transience.

One issue Geoffrey, Richard and i found ourselves questionning was the size of the image. The dimensions you see are those of Richard's original file, though we questioned him as to his intention. What follows below are excerpts from a series of emails that formed my discussion with Richard on this issue. I myself find this piece quite perplexing, in the most positive sense of the term, and continually return to it in an attempt to solve its mystery, all the while knowing full well that that elusiveness is the very attraction.

A Brief Discussion between Richard di Santo and Michael Tweed

RDS: Flim's piece looks great on the Frail site, Michael, thank you. One small thing, though, which should be an easy fix: I've noticed that it has been resized (that is, enlarged), and I would prefer that it be kept to its original dimensions (enlarging it changes the resolution of the images, making them look far more pixellated than they should). I ask that it be restored to its original size. Hope that's ok with you.

MT: The size has been fixed. Looks good. Now on my system Hell 3 seems a bit less consequential, but I am under the impression that was your intention from the beginning, that microscopic cellular sense has its own subtle impact. Especially now floating there in the void of the full black screen. I really like this piece, and kudos to you and Enrico for creating it... and many thanks for sharing it.

RDS: Thanks for your kind words, Michael (although I don't really get what you mean by "less consequential"), and for fixing the size.

MT: "Less consequential" -- yes what do I mean? I think what I was attempting to refer to was the balance of the size relationships, and that the "actual" size just somehow seems too small, but as I said that then strengthens that minuscule cellular sense that the images provide. It becomes a play between the notion of hell and the organic. The slightly larger version was less tangible and the sense of space and void more palpable. Counter-intuitively it seems to me that the smaller version is more palpable and concrete, the images seeming denser and the space less threatening. It's a very odd effect and very much against what I, at least, would expect.

RDS: For me, it's much better small like this. Thanks again!

Michael Tweed

Richard di Santo

2005-08-20T12:45:00.001-07:00

Bicir on the Path of Fallen Leaves & Hell 3 (with Flim)

I’m in a bit of an awkward position here as Richard is a recent acquaintance of mine and i know he is of the belief that the less said about an artist the better, or perhaps he is refering solely to himself, i’m not really sure, but there you have it a disclosure of sorts.

I do feel however that the story of how we met may provide a few clues to understanding Bicir. You see, a few months ago i was searching for a hard-to-find CD by the Icelandic composer Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, Children of Nature to be exact, which i fortunately discovered on Amazon’s marketplace. In the process of making the order i mentioned i was looking for a few other things and i received a rather pleasant reply from Richard suggesting various other titles in the same genre and gentle encouragement to check out the reviews on his website. From there a conversation developed which lead to our meeting over a beer one day. It turns out that among his many talents Richard is a rather astute music critic, which you can see by visiting his website Incursion.org yourself. And it is that refined ear, that ability to listen deeply, especially to often near silent electro-acoustic compositions, that is reflected in Bicir.

Bicir displays an attention, you might even describe it as “an intended gaze,” he is not satisfied with merely looking, but is intent upon truly seeing. His gaze is groping out into the world, extending his own seemingly limited self. And it is in this process of questionning that i can’t help but feel that not only Bicir, but Richard himself begins to question his own reliance on words. There is a point, implied, though not subtley, where it dawns on Bicir that the intellect has usurped the throne, and in that moment he sees that the emperor has no clothes. I don’t know if Richard is at all familiar with the Tao Teh Ching but in it Lao Tzu wrote, “If it was not laughed at it would not be the Tao.” But, whatever the case, Bicir bursts out laughing.

So there is one possible reading. Richard may be shocked when he reads it, for i have no idea what his own intentions were with the piece. However this is a reading which has common threads extending throughout many, if not all, of the pieces in this exhibition: an acute analysis of perception and how we read the world and our place within it.

But there are other aspects that should be addressed as well, especially those of form. For here we are, presenting an exhibition of art in a new media and yet with such rather flexible technology at his fingertips, Richard creates little more than an electronic chapbook, to the point of simulating the layout of a book opened before you. Now it just so happens that just the other day Amazon, in an obvious nod to iTunes, began selling short stories for the reasonable price of 49cents a download. Apparently you can read them online or store them to be read on your own computer, but i suspect most people will simply print them out and read them from the familiar page. I’m not sure about those who have been raised with computers, but i and most people i know, are yet to find the experience of reading from a monitor nearly as satisfying as the feel and smell of decently made book. So perhaps Richard is on to something here by building a comfortable bridge between the printed and digital text.

William S. Burroughs’ mentor Brion Gyosin believed that writers were lagging 50 years behind painters, but that was back in the fifties. These days i think they are falling ever quicker behind, especially considering the staggering pace maintained by the possibilities and discoveries, if not the very dialogue that artists are now engaged in. Even poetry, that bastion of experimentation and contrarity, seems to be withering in face of where things are headed. But again i wonder whether Richard is unaware of the choices he has made or is instead making the difficult, and among a certain milieu i suspect unpopular, choice of using the latest software and technology while rooting himself in a classical tradition? I myself remain undecided for i find that i am somewhat charmed by this little text and the delicate shade of its accompanying images, and yet i can’t help but wonder about how much further such realisations as those of Bicir might be carried.

Michael Tweed

Amit Pitaru

2005-08-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

Hammond Flower
We've all seen loads of sampler-based, interactive Flash works online. You know: make your own music a la paint-by-numbers. At first, Amit's Hammond Flower seems to share something with this genre. But on closer inspection (and reading what he has to say about it on pitaru.com) we discover a much deeper study at work.

He has taken the beloved Hammond B3 organ and reverse engineered it to reveal, in a tactile, hands-on way, how it works and what gives it its particular charm. His own background as a musician basically led him to create a shifting, 8-tone composition that we deconstruct when we intereact with the flower. We discover the built-in dissonance of each tone and how each affects the others.

Saul Bellows (and others) has argued that arcane knowledge - that intense study and understanding of some tiny corner of the universe - actually puts the practitioneer in closer touch with all things. That's what Amit is doing: taking us much deeper into a specific musical device to reveal general information about (tonal) relationships.

Michael told me an interesting story about the thumb piano and its role in the creation of the world, but I forget the details now...

Geoffrey Shea

Oleg Paschenko

2005-08-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

Arborama, Desperanzza, Bedazedly Experiencing How to Fly, Saturnus eateth mortals not
I've been watching Oleg work from a distance for years. I've always been impressed with how he takes the nuts and bolts of actionscripting (a hugely left-brain activity) and combines them with his bizarro illustrations to create web works which are exceedingly gritty and visceral. The consistent tone in his work emerges from the damnably erratic shifts in his on-screen presentations, his art-director impulse to work with other image makers and his own blackened worldview.

I always showed people Desperanzza first, and I've come to loath telletubbies (which I can imagine he does, too, when I look at Saturnus), but after Michael suggested that we add Arborama to the selection I've started to think that this is the definitive Oleg Paschenko piece. It's devoid of the gaunt, Munch-like figures that haunt much of his other work, but it issues a quiet invitation to interact in a cold, barren world that we don't actually navigate, but rather stumble around in. Like so much else in life.

Geoffrey Shea

Lo Iacono

2005-08-20T12:43:00.002-07:00

DigitalSnapshot: Momentmanipulationen von Raum, Ort und Zeit
Each time I watch this piece, even just to check that it uploaded to the site, I'm quickly transfixed and watch it through to the end - again. Lo has apparently employs some technique for 2D/3D manipulation of moving images (there's a technical document on his website, but my German's not that good). But he uses it in such an understated way that after getting a sense of what's going on technically (the first 20 or 30 seconds) I become completely engrossed with the characters and the narrative flow.

He takes a few minutes in a city park in the middle of the afternoon (is that all staged or is this just a fantastic slice of life?) and delves into it from multiple, shifting perspectives. We start to see things that exist all around us all the time, put slip past our perception because of our limited point of view. This is what Michael is talking about when he refers to aesthetics: the study of perception and the potential effectiveness of communication.

Of course we have to wonder what will come next: further deployment of a presumably laborious technique, or further delving into the exploration of reality - or both. Many artists who develop solutions for particular artistic problems go on to refine the solution without necessarily deepening our understanding of the underlying problem. (I'll only mention the multiple camera technique in the Matrix, so as not to hurt anyone else's feelings.)

Geoffrey Shea

Marc Behrens

2005-08-20T12:43:00.001-07:00

Photographic Works: Trees

Marc Behrens is an accomplished musician and sound artist who has released numerous CDs which would primarly fall into the electro-acoutic category. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Behrens doesn’t so much compose sounds as manipulate silence. While writing this I have decided to slip on my headphones and listen to his collaboration with Paulo Raposo Further Consequences of Reinterpretation, on which they reinterpret various remixes of Nosei Sakata’s *0 “a CD which contains basically nothing (i.e. sound outside the human hearing range).” I’ve already dragged my laptop out onto the back porch where a line of 100 yr. old Norwegian spruce shelters my property, so i like to think that i've created near-ideal conditions to reflect on Behrens' photos.

Each day i stroll down the back, through the forest and into the conservation area, i prefer the route that cuts through the cedar grove by the falls and then along the river, i cut across the main dam and up the street to the post office to check if i have received any mail. Most days i haven’t. I’ve walked this route 5 or 6 days a week for the past 2 ½ years, but i’ve never wearied of it. There are seemingly endless nuances to the water’s surface and the reflection of the sky upon it; and the forest, barren except for some fern and moss and carpeted with cedar twigs, has an unordered regularity and stately calm architects and city planners can vainly strive for but never achieve.

Yet in these photos Behrens is presenting us with much more than the beauty of nature; for these are photos of planted forests, which together with their sheer beauty and elegance, raise issues of humanity’s inevitable destruction of her environment, as well as her occasionally noble attempts to reverse the damage.

Upon first reviewing this series i was drawn foremost to the almost austere regularity of Feldberg and Hohemark, but over time i have come to appreciate Marc’s wise decision to include the lush unruliness of Sintra – for in the end even man’s most rigid interventions will be transformed and consumed, and revert to a chaos we so often callously dismiss.

Michael Tweed

Steven Orr

2005-08-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

Untitled Sky Video

I have a penchant for open spaces and have spent a fair amount of time roaming about the desert in the southwestern US, as well as the heart of the outback in Australia. I’ve also found myself sitting for long stretches high up in the Himalayas just gazing out into the blue. So this little reflection on infinity and the often overlooked wonder of which we are a part has a special resonance for me.

While Geoffrey was reformatting it, he noticed that the title on the tape was Sentinels which led me to inquire of Steven which title should be listed. I’m glad he had already settled on this one, for the open vagueness, not to mention the banality of Untitled Sky Video, captures the essence of the images perfectly. I only mention this to highlight that sense of both watching and being watched over. The French word “veilleur” captures this sense perfectly, for it means a watcher (veilleur de nuit is a night-watchman), but it can also refer to a night-light or pilot-lamp.

I personally don’t accept the notion of the fall of man, but those who do have put forth various myths to explain our sorry condition: from eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge to Babel to Prometheus strapping on his wings. As for me, if pressed i would propose that our downfall was the harnassing of fire which has allowed us to maintain our fear of the dark and the unknown threats lurking within it, as well as allowing us to preserve food stores and hence attain a false sense of mastery over our environment rather than the more humble position we actually do hold. And here in Orr’s video, the street lamps jutting into the sky act as recurrent and paradoxical reminders of this false security; for unlike our usual perspective they are not towering overhead, but meekly poking up from the bottom of the frame, dwarfed and isolated, often not even illuminated.

Here i am reminded of di Santo’s character Bicir overcome by the immensity of the world both in its celestial vastness and the infinity of the minuscule. Both pieces serving as a reminder, urging one to settle into oneself and to settle into the world, to once again become unfamiliar both to oneself and to one's environment. Reflecting on the work of these two artists, I am reminded of the Tibetan saying, “to look -- like an infant entering a temple for the first time.”

Michael Tweed

Lester Alonso

2005-08-20T12:41:00.001-07:00

Beach Fronts, Weavers & Window Sill

Lester is such a prolific and varied artist, it’s hard to know where to begin. Each piece here is so different, and the other works of his that i have looked at are even more so. But what is readily apparent is his proficiency: there is no doubt this guy has a good grasp of the tools of his chosen medium. But that is merely stating the obvious, what want to analyse is: what drew me to these three pieces in particular?

It started with Beach Fronts, which i came across on the Zed website. In this short video our concern with the ins and outs of perception is readily apparent. The American artist and father of light and space art Robert Irwin once said that what defines art from other disciplines is its concern with aesthetics. And what is aesthetics other than an investigation of how we perceive? It was when he began to really look at his paintings and how they appeared even within the rigid environment of his studio that Irwin began to see that the painting was as much outside the frame as it was inside – in fact, it could easily be argued that it resided outside of more than within itself.

Beach Fronts subverts a casual view of the beach, and then subverts even the new view that one quickly assumes. A simple stretch of sand and snow fence fractures and abstracts, forcing one to no longer gaze passively “out,” but rather follow that gaze back to its source; leaving one with an empty hand, but much fuller for the journey.

Beneath the veneer of a simple visual documentary free of narration, Weavers too reveals the assumptions we make as we move through our everyday world. There behind the façade of a typical suburban home in the Philippines, an entire cultural history is enacted complete with the economic and class issues that we hadn’t dared to confront until presented with the common view from the street. Here Alonso has turned the typical documentary on its head and in the process raised a whole series of questions and enigmas, leaving us dangling with our own doubt.

And then there are those insects crawling across that window sill, the snow falling - and whatever is that black shape which proceeds down the snow-covered walkway in the background? What kind of insect prospers so well in the dead of winter? Has the filmmaker perhaps spliced the foreground together with an incongruous backdrop? Or is the answer simply banal? But sure enough, once again one has been forced from the comfort zone of assumed perceptions, and the commonplace restored to a source of endless fascination.

Michael Tweed

Tony Round

2005-08-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

Snow & Soundmap

I've just watched Snow again. Motion, stasis, that dull state of waiting…

Being only too familiar with airports and train stations, i’m at a bit of a loss for words about this one. That however is one of the things i like about this piece: its familiarity and matter-of-factness. It’s funny but i actually feel a bit let down when the jet finally goes screaming off. This final image is almost post-coital in its diminishing of the anticipation and anxiety which led up to that moment. But then it is that banal release that reveals the until then hidden eroticism of the wait, for waiting is never sterile but pregnant with its own particular tone and sensibility. The delay replete with a wordless, if not outright thoughtless potential for being and the mute angst which lies at the heart of living.

Michael Tweed

John Bellucci

2005-08-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Three Mirrors: Peep, Original Room, Brief Bird

Disclosure: John Bellucci and i met 12 or 13 years ago in Nepal.

Full disclosure: I approached John after a public teaching by a Tibetan lama, having wondered who the intense guy with the passionate and probing questions was. So as we were putting on our shoes i introduced myself. We continued chatting while we descended the monastery stairs and wound up sitting on a rooftop patio, sipping spiced tea, mountain peaks in the distance whichever way you looked. Our conversation quickly turned to perception which had been preoccupying me at the time, and to be honest still does. And it was in relation to this that John first mentioned the name Robert Irwin. This was no small discovery for me, and upon my return to Paris, where i was living at the time, a friend was kind enough to give me his copy of Lawrence Weschler’s biography of Irwin, Seeing is Forgetting…

Why do i mention all this? Well, simply to direct those interested in deciphering Bellucci’s work to that marvelous and revelatory book, for i can’t help but feel that it will provide a more adequate answer than i ever could.

Michael Tweed

defasten

2005-08-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

Density 1, AERIAL.REM & Sequence-01

It was because of defasten that this exhibition swelled to the size that it is. You see we already had a full roster when i stumbled across Density 1. I immediately called Geoffrey to see if we could make room for another piece or two, luckily Geoffrey is a very laid back and open-minded guy (the perfect traits for collaborating on a project like this) and so i sent an acquisition request off to Montréal.

All three of these works deal with place, self and language; but i find that Density 1 is perhaps the most successful at incorporating all three of these notions into a cohesive whole. After situating the viewer with those slow drifting freezes of various common locales, things go silent and a series of blinked images return one to a solid placement within one’s own body – one can’t help but feel that one is looking “out” at the images. Then a return to broader urbanscapes and finally to an aerial view of what appears to be a rather barren landscape. So it is that defasten moves one from the familiar to self to community to environment; and quite fluidly at that.

If one has viewed all three of defasten’s videos, one will notice common themes and hooks running through the set. One also gets a sense of the future, or at least the fiction of a future. And though there is an obvious reliance upon science and technology, he keeps bringing us back to our own confused notions of self and the inadequacy of the filters we attempt to apply to our perceptions and communications. I am under the impression that defasten is not content with easy answers, nor seduced by the very technology that he employs in his videos and animation.

He refers to the theories of Derrida when speaking about the origins of these videos, but that seems a bit convenient. When reflecting upon them it is Heidegger’s critique of technology that comes to mind, for example, “The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.” It is this play between controlling and being controlled that seems foremost in all three of these videos, and the questions that they and Heidegger raise are ones we have yet to adequately answer. Yet it is fast becoming apparent that our very survival is very likely dependent on rising to the challenge presented by such a line of questioning.

Michael Tweed

Arlene Ducao

2005-08-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

Head of Hair, Penetrating Needle
In Arlene's writing about her 3D animation work she starts with the same presumption that I've always held about this medium: so much effort for so little output. But then she delved into it and found it offered the exact right combination of tools for her particular vision. She wanted to combine her chamber opera compositions with her expereiences modeling in clay and her instinct to subvert scale and space, like a diminutive deployment of Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk.

She also talks about her penchant for narrative and in comparing these two works I was reminded of Truffaut's stated strategy of always trying to work on a dramatic film and a comedy at the same time. Penetrating Needle and Head of Hair share much in terms of style, but one seems to be a reflection on the complexities of relationships while the other is a clever one-liner.

And of course if you view her other works online (arlduc.org) you'll be overwhelmed by the volume of her output. (I'm always impressed by artists who can include serious music composition as a sidebar to their artistic output.)

We're glad that Arlene will be attending the real-world launch of Frail at the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film and that she'll be available to talk about her work. We'll try to get some of that online in this post...

Geoffrey Shea

Shié Kasai

2005-08-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

Another Ordinary Afternoon

Animation has always held a fascination for me. Here Kasai’s choice of stop-frame animation almost masochistically enacts the very story she has chosen to illustrate. I mean really, how different can the positioning and shooting of some 31 frames for each second of video be from the endless repetitive toil of that little amorphous Arp-like character she has created. And then there is the whimsy, much like those passing clouds which are born and strung up across the sky. Can one help but wonder what green keys wind an artist like Kasai up?

It would be easy to dismiss this as simply a crude little work of a now almost ancient art form, however we must contend with various readings - both intended and unintended. First i can’t let the opportunity to repeat the name of the great master of stop-frame animation Ray Harryhausen. These days, thanks to Pixar, Lucasfilms and the technological wunderkinds that inhabit Hollywood, we have come to expect the seamless perfection technological solutions can afford us. But in the process we lose sight of the fragility and warmth of the artist’s own hand.

Once, a few years back, while strolling through the countless booths at FIAC, the large international art fair in Paris, my eye caught sight of a gallery displaying the work of Bram van Velde. Amidst a gathering of work by some of the most highly regarded artists, i was instantly struck by how apparent Bram’s own trembling hand was in his crude gouaches. This wasn’t “art” or “beauty,” a comment or a lesson, or even a representation, but merely a heart laid bare. There was the artist, no not even an “artist,” just Bram himself struggling to come to terms with himself and the world. Don’t be fooled, this is no small feat and when one begins to look through galleries, museums and monographs, one soon discovers that what one first dismissed as a mark of inferiority is actually the rarest sign of integrity and mastery. Bram himself said that “what makes a canvas fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is extremely rare. Most people don’t dare to be sincere.”

Another story comes to mind: My friend Gregory Colbert is a filmmaker and photographer who has traveled throughout the world, shooting interactions between man and wild animals, notably elephants and whales. His work is now traveling about the world in a nomadic museum as an exhibition called Ashes and Snow. Long before his present celebrity, folks at Spielberg or somebody else’s Hollywood studio had caught wind of his project and came to see some of his footage. Apparently after watching some roughs they asked Colbert how long he had worked on it and how much it had cost him. Colbert told them that he’d been shooting over a ten year period and he had spent some six figures of his own money in the process. The guys from the studio took the liberty of pointing out his folly by explaining that they could have created the same footage on a computer in six weeks and at one-tenth the cost. Colbert just shook his head and said, “Perhaps, but I was out there swimming with that elephant and performing an underwater ballet with that wild manatee; while you have been sitting there staring at a computer screen.” Now, whatever one thinks of Colbert’s work, he’s got a point: simulated environments and experiences can never give us the sense of wonder and satisfaction that life in the real world can – and everyone longs for that rush of feeling truly alive.

So is that little Arp-like character trundling up and down that rainbow corridor with clouds on its back, not perhaps a subtle swipe at the very technology that we are employing in this very endeavour? I merely ask, for whether one wants to analyze it or not, Another Ordinary Afternoon still delivers as a simple diversion from the monotony we have come to entrap ourselves within.

Michael Tweed