Location| Liverpool, UK: New Media "Art" at a Crossroads

Liverpool is a dynamic place with an amazing cultural vibe. This aerial shot showcases the now completed Liverpool One metropolitan plan that has transformed the heart of the city (image: architecture.com)

My visit to Liverpool to attend and present a paper at Rewire: The Fourth International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology proved both eye-opening and thoroughly enjoyable. First of all, Liverpool is an incredibly dynamic city—one that has recently undergone an amazing transformation in its metropolitan core and is clearly living up to its title as one of Europe’s cultural capitals (an honour it officially held in 2008). Housing three major universities, two art schools, and FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool is also the perfect place to host a dialogue about the current state of new media art, with all of its challenges, opportunities, and rapidly changing parameters.

Coming from Vancouver, a city comfortable with the idea of accepting new media forms in an art context, I was most surprised by how many artists and art institutions represented at the conference from other parts of the world still face serious challenges exhibiting and finding audiences for digitally based media. Still, the conversation around the future of new media art I heard in so many of the papers pointed to the rapid changes that the uses of new technology are bringing about in how artists engage with digital platforms, transforming the very definition of what “art” can be.

Rewire 2011 was a three-day conference event hosted by FACT and held at Liverpool John Moores University Art and Design Academy.

One of the ideas I explored in my own paper (titled "Intersecting Worlds of Commerce and Experimentation: Creating Legitimacy for the “Art” of Media") concerned how questions of innovation are increasingly dictated by consumer habits and end-user preferences as never before. At the level of simple application, the speed and accessibility of ever more sophisticated software platforms to non-specialist users has foregrounded the social dimension and speed of dissemination of new media, but also accelerated and blurred previously established boundaries in how the “art” of new media can be understood.

The "original" Abramovic performance

One very recent example that I shared, first brought to my attention via a link sent by a student (thanks Andrea!), raises these issues within a clever technological framework. Pippin Barr, an artist and media studies professor at the University of Copenhagen, borrows from the visual language and commercial context of gaming to reconfigure meaning around high concept art exhibitions such as Marina Abramovic’s recent retrospective of performance art at MOMA, “The Artist is Present”—an exhibition I attended and blogged about last year. As Barr explains on his blog, his project challenges artists to expand the potential audience for contemporary art by rethinking how notions of gaming, play, and interactivity operate in the conceptual underpinnings of their projects:

“Critically, these alternate games seem like they're not going to be fun. And it's all very well to talk about how games don't have to be fun, they can be "interesting" or "challenging" or "disturbing" and so on. This is true, but it's also true that basically nobody's going to play those games except the brave vanguard. The question then becomes whether the vanguard can convince anyone else to play them too.”

Three video stills from Pippin Bar's creative game "The Artist is Present" reconfiguring Abramovic's performance into a form of gaming.

With these unusual juxtapositions, we see the unpredictable and unruly path that the blurring of boundaries initiates in conversations around what can constitute the “art” of new media. What then can be done in the face of these developments? And is there perhaps a new space for an avant-garde sensibility to re-emerge and challenge what is shaping up around entrenching notions of the “art” of new media?

To be sure, It becomes a question of how to engage audiences differently, and understanding that notions of the avant-garde, counter-cultural practice, social interaction are all elements immanent within the technological framework of new media. How, where, and through what means the designation of “art” is aligned to this framework is proving today, as it has in the past with previous new media forms such as photography and film, to be a constantly evolving discourse. As I left Liverpool, I couldn’t help think that much of the debate and critical discussion that took place at the conference only reinforced the productive potential of this evolving form of art. This should serve as some comfort then that the discourse around new media can never remain fully divorced from the potential for radicality and resistance.

Weekly Twitter Round Up

So I’ve spent much of the weekend cloistered at home putting the finishing touches on a conference paper and visual presentation I will be making in Liverpool, England at Rewire 2011, the Fourth International Conference on the Histories of Media Art. I have been looking forward to this event for quite some time and have already made plans to visit the Tate Liverpool and The Walker and a bunch of smaller local galleries while I am there. It is my first trip to the city and I will be exploring and getting to know the local cultural offerings, many of which relate to the new media art angle of the conference. John Lennon attended art school in Liverpool, so I will be looking for traces of the urban environment that inspired him. 

As for the Twitterverse, it has been a nonstop critique-a-thon over Facebook’s “improvements” this week. Since I use Chrome, I quickly downloaded Unannoying Facebook and went about my day. Here are some favourite tweets from the past week—I will make sure to take lots of pictures of Liverpool and reflect on my time there upon my return!  

ArtsBeat Blog: Thinking Cap: Delaying Gratification: Is it possible to develop and improve one's self-control?

500 years of female portraiture in 3 minutes 

How the internet created an Age of Rage

Skywriting as Graffiti:@SaberAWR Protests Mural Moratorium

It's Banned Books Week! Learn how you can take part in a virtual read-out

What Facebook users 'dislike' about the new makeover

Hidden Goya discovered—Early portrait of Spanish general found under a Rijksmuseum painting 

Location| Venice Biennale: Photos and Reflections (Part 3: Germany, France, and Great Britain)

Venice by night.... a unique atmospheric experience (photo: D. Barenscott)

Having looked closer to home with my reflections on the Canadian and US pavilions at the Venice Biennale in Part One and Part Two of this post, I will now turn to some thoughts on three exhibitions that reflect more current trends in immersive installation, new media, and the intersection of filmic and visual arts in contemporary art. Perhaps not surprisingly, the German, French, and Great Britain pavilions best reflected these approaches and with the most drama.

Venice Biennale 2011(photo D: Barenscott)

German Pavilion, the sign says it all (photo: D. Barenscott)

First, it was nearly impossible to ignore the publicity surrounding the German selection for this year’s Venice Biennale. The late artist and filmmaker Christof Schlingensief had agreed to participate just nine months before passing away of terminal cancer, and so the pavilion organizers were faced with the challenge of how to present the artist’s controversial work without his guidance. In the end, a large scale replica of Schlingensief’s boyhood church created the spatial container for a tribute to his creative projects joining film, experimental theatre, and mixed media. We spotted the pavilion almost immediately—it is tough to ignore a building with the words EGOMANIA emblazoned on it—and entered into what was both a terrifying and strangely kitschy and surreal space. The church-like setting had been transformed into a temple of “Kino,” complete with alter and benches to sit and contemplate the birage of motion pictures on three screens above the viewers’ heads. 

As a controversial filmmaker within his native Germany, Schlingensief’s difficult films-- such as A Hundred Years of Adolph Hitler (1989) and The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990)-- deal with the unspoken and repressed elements of the nation’s violent past. The pavilion was awarded the top prize at the Biennalethis year, yet I could not help thinking that all of the violent spectacle shown there only worked to reinforce negative stereotypes visitors might already hold about Germany. There was also something very creepy and unsettling about how people were interacting with the show—many were giggling and seeming to enjoy the “forbidden” quality of what was being represented. Perhaps this was Schlingensief’s understanding of human nature at work—seeking to expose and confront us with our hidden impulses.    

A peek inside cannot the church to Kino (photos: D. Barenscott)

Moving to the French pavilion, the theme of motion pictures and immersive environments was approached from a different direction by the mixed media artist Christian Boltanski. The multi-room exhibition "Chance" featured one of the most intriguing spaces for visitors to explore. Floor to ceiling scaffolding and a maze-like setting invited people to walk through the show and the addition of moving images of babies faces (quite literally on tracks above our heads), and a great deal of mechanical noise (unusual in an “art space” that is often a quiet space of contemplation) added to the high sensory experience. Every minute or so, the noise and the track would stop, focusing on one single image of a baby’s face. Titled The Wheel of Fortune, the quality of random selection in this project reflected the other rooms where Boltanski featured statistics of people who would be born and would die that day (Last News from Humans) and an interactive piece that allowed people to form a new human through pressing a button and assembling a face from random fragments of pre-existing photographs (Be New).

(photos D: Barenscott)

Finally, our visit to the Great Britain pavilion rounded out the last of these most experiential exhibitions. Mike Nelson’s much talked about atmospheric installations, which immerse the viewer in an unfolding narrative that is built through a sequence of carefully reconstructed spatial structures, are like a grown-up versions of those amusement park rides that move people through reconstructed haunted houses. The final project does not disappoint and a real sense of adventure and play takes hold as we enter the pavilion. First, we are told to watch our heads at all times and be careful not to trip or fall over all of the materials on the floor and overhead. Second, we are placed inside what appears to be a real space, with harsh lighting, poorly ventilated and dusty rooms, together with rusty cans, implements, dirty mattresses, rugs etc. strewn about the dingy floors. 

Inside the spaces of the Great Britain pavilion-- a contemporary art version of a haunted house (photos: D. Barenscott)

One of the guides tells us that it is meant to be replica of a Turkish workhouse, yet its bleak atmosphere and bizarre additions (like the room pictured above that is used as a photo development lab) was one that likely triggers connections to any number of sweatshop or illegal spaces of temporary refuge for migrants and other marginalized and "outlaw" elements.  As we were also told, Nelson attempted to reconstruct an earlier installation from another Biennale held in Istanbul in 2003. That is, the whole project is as much a conceptual one of trying to recreate an installation using a different space and geographic location as it is about the very embodied experience the final project provides its audience. No doubt it left me with a very disorienting sense of where I was, and that is perhaps the journey that we were meant to take with all three of the pavilions I have outlined here.

Location| Venice Biennale 2011: Photos and Reflections (Part Two: United States)

Ah Venice..... (photo: D. Barenscott)

Part One of my reflections on the Venice Biennale began with Canada this week, and now my attention turns to the United States--no surprise there, and perhaps a bit too expected, but as you will see, the pavilion was impossible to ignore. With rumours of James Franco representing the United States circulating around the exhibition all year, I can readily admit a spectacular quality was already attached to the US show well ahead of my visit. And quite literally within a few days of arriving in the city, we had heard rumours again that the previously cancelled and then postponed Franco installation (off-site and not at the official pavilion) was going to go ahead in a matter of days. Now for any of you who have visited Venice, you know the labyrinth of small islands and thousands of snaking streets and campos pose a challenge to the most seasoned traveler. And so in the end, we were quite honestly disappointed not to be able to find the Franco project, but what we found at the Giardini in the American building was still quite something to behold.

Venice Biennale 2011 (photo: D. Barenscott)

Approaching the pavilion, we were already puzzled with the presence of a massive military tank near the entrance. I had made efforts to avoid reading too much about what I would see there, so I did not connect the tank to the US pavilion, assuming that it was part of something  that the Israelis were showing in the adjacent exhibition (my bad, I know). Moving closer, we caught sight of a very athletic woman running on what appeared to be a treadmill on top of the massive vehicle, causing the wheel mechanism below to move. I immediately smiled at the irony of this very typically North American leisure pastime, treadmill running (something I actually enjoy myself), connected to what many would perceive as an unrelated reference to the military industrial complex. But as we entered the US exhibition and got to know the work of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla—a collaborative artist duo who live and work in the American territory of Puerto Rico— it became apparent that their unexpected juxtapositions were part of a broader project to bring themes of commerce, entertainment, competition, and nationalism into a productive tension.

Unexpected juxtapostions abound in Allora and Calzadilla's exhibition Gloria at the US Pavilion. Featured here is Track and Field (2011) (photo: D. Barenscott).

Upon entry, visitors are immediately met with another odd sight—a human size neo-classically rendered statue lying inside a sun-tanning bed. With the provocative title Armed Freedom Lying on a Sunbed, the statue’s visual vocabulary and location inside the entrance way’s architectural dome (referencing the US Capital dome and rotunda) signals its idealized representation. But in a clever twist, the artists render this national symbol of an ideal nation in connection to the idealized and individuated notions of beauty associated with the pursuit of youth in American culture.

Allora and Calzadilla, Armed Freedom Lying on a Sunbed (2011) (photo: D. Barenscott)

The pursuit of beauty and perfection in the national social body is also represented in Allora and Calzadilla’s Body of Flight installation and performance. Recreating in sculpted form Delta and American airlines’ business class seats, the artists partnered with American Olympic gymnasts to create an intentionally “contaminated” gymnastic routine that the athletes would perform with and around the seats. When we arrived at the pavilion, we were fortunate to get a front seat for the rigorous fifteen minute gymnastic routine performed right inside the gallery space in front of our eyes. I still cannot believe the physical endurance demonstrated by the gymnast, and found myself understanding how the artists were exploring ideas associating modernity, innovation, and design, with embodied notions of flexibility and performance.

All images are part of the artists' Body in Flight (2011) project. I was unable to find out the name of the US gymnast, but she was absolutely amazing! (photo: D. Barenscott)

Finally, the piece that left us most amused was the massive sculptural object, Algorithm, which was located in its own room. Well over twenty feet tall, the object appears to be some kind of a monster organ from one side, but as soon as you move around it, one immediately recognizes its function as an ATM machine. We had already been warned upon entry that all of the art works were “fully functional,” so I understood that I would be putting my own bank card at risk if I actually placed it inside the machine. Pulling out an SFU copy card with a magnetic strip, I placed it inside the machine and was prompted to push a few buttons. Almost immediately, the large sculpture began to project a very loud series of sounds and spit my card back out at me.

Allora and Calzadilla, Algorithm (2011)

As we spoke with a pavilion representative, we learned that the artists had collaborated with a composer to create a variety of atonal and structured musical compositions to correspond unpredictably to the way users engaged with the machine. I watched as several visitors approached and used the machine, thinking about how such a mechanized part of our lives becomes so completely defamiliarized through the unexpected connection to a musical algorithm. The music had a very trance like quality, as if we were enjoying the sounds in a church, and I think that association with the detached and very mystical workings of international commerce was the very point that the artists wanted to make.  Loved it and all that Allora and Calzadilla brought to the table for the US offering at Venice. If only they could have talked James Franco into making an appearance running on the tank—now that would have been very very cool to unpack and discuss.

Location| Venice Biennale 2011: Photos and Reflections (Part 1, Canada)

The Venice Biennale is one of the most anticipated contemporary art exhibitions in the art world, held in one of the most unique and somewhat unlikely settings on the planet (photo: D. Barenscott)

Over the summer, I embarked upon a pretty ambitious month-long trip to Europe that took me from Budapest to Paris, from Venice to Dubrovnik, and touring around the Mediterranean as far as Turkey. Taking a much needed break from the rigours of teaching and other administrative tasks over the past academic year, I wanted to take some time to focus on important facets of my research and also work in as many key exhibitions and museum visits as I could. At the beginning of the year, I had blogged about important exhibitions to watch in 2011, and I am happy to report that I did my best to see as much great modern and contemporary art as I could in Europe, even while continuing to be sucked into a Gothic or Medieval church or two along the way! 

Of my contemporary art encounters, the Venice Biennale was perhaps among my favourite. This might seem an obvious choice to many, but I had grown somewhat ambivalent about what I would see on display after many years of lukewarm reviews and questions about the relevance of a nationality based exhibition in an increasingly global art world context.  

The main and original site of the pavilions are situated in a large city park on the Western most edges of Venice (photo: D. Barenscott)

After downloading and sorting through my hundreds of photographs (yes, it paid to bring along a good digital camera on this trip!), I decided that I would share and reflect on a number of the pavilions I visited over a series of blog posts over the next week or so.

I wanted to begin with Canada—not just because I happen to be Canadian, or because our artist representative Steven Shearer happens to be from Vancouver (although these are valid enough reasons, right?)—but because the pavilion stood in very stark contrast to the direction other country’s took in their artistic and thematic choices.

Note Canada's awkward position on the map in relation to other nations.

To begin with, the Canadian pavilion traditionally occupies an odd and very small and difficult space in the overall design of the broader Biennale grounds at the Venice Giardini (gardens). Lodged between and behind the much more prominent England and Germany pavilions, Canada is relegated to the very edge of the exhibition grounds and perceptually seems to get lost, reflecting our often perceived global position as a distant and small player in larger global affairs. Steven Shearer’s works, as I introduced in a post last June, already seemed a somewhat unlikely choice for placement in the pavilion since his works gave shape to a much more personal and less overtly political or broader social approach as with past choices that drew visitors to the pavilion (i.e. other Vancouver based artists such as Rebecca Belmore, Rodney Graham, or Ken Lum). But after seeing and experiencing the exhibition for myself, it makes sense to me why he took on the challenge of both the space and place of the pavilion.

The inside entrance to the Canadian pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale (photo: D. Barenscott)

Shearer's large scale mural of one of his "heavy metal poems" did manage to catch audience attention, but the interior of the exhibition space was in sharp contrast to the spectacle of the sign outside (photo: D. Barenscott)

Shearer’s art practice, which is mostly made up of drawings, paintings, sketches, and murals, channelled a kind of quiet and contemplative retreat from the more brash, spectacular, and sometimes overtly in-your-face new media, performance, and installation focused projects seen in a majority of the other national pavilions. The only hint of that came with his large and provocative mural (see image above) that actually worked to grab visitor's initial attention to the Canadian space. Once inside, however, I kept thinking as I walked through the space and watched other’s engage with Shearer’s works, how much more attention was being paid to these works and to a practice that some would now think of as far more traditional in orientation.

(photo: D. Barenscott)

(photo: D. Barenscott)

A quiet retreat from the noise of the Venice Biennale (photo: D. Barenscott)

Canada, of course, is well known and often closely connected to its pioneering role in new media, video, and digital arts technologies, and so it was a bold move to go with a body of work that asked for a renewed attention and interest to less technologically centered art-making practices. As Shearer explains in an interview this past summer with the National Post, the “Canadian” identity is one that he also views as shifting, indeterminent, yet worthy of consideration. 

Q:  How does it feel to be representing Canada in Venice?

A I don't feel like I'm representing a nation. To make something about being a Canadian person... I don't know how you do that other than just do what I've done, be an artist based in Canada. And at many points, I never even thought I'd be an artist. I had social anxiety and for a long time wanted nothing more than to be left alone in my parents' basement making drawings and playing guitar. The fact that those kinds of activities are what pushed me out into the world... that's about as big of a transition as I can handle.

Q: So what are you doing in Venice?

A I wanted to respond to the Canada Pavilion's space, and also to some anxiety that exists about its small scale and lack of prominence. So I decided to create a false front for it and put one of my poem murals on it. This way, at least from one point of view, the Canada Pavilion appears to be as big as the German or British ones. I also liked putting this large thing out in front to point out how intimate the Canada Pavilion is. It's not a great pavilion for big, dominant works. It was made to show paintings, drawings and small sculptures. So inside, I decided to do that. Overall, I was interested in celebrating the space rather than trying to negate it.

I for one was very glad to see Canada represented in this way, and hope that the curatorial decisions made for this year's Venice Biennale signal a new direction for representing Canadian contemporary art to the rest of the world.