'The Weight of History'

For my second university project brief, one of the tutors assigned each student a book from the library at random. We were to take out our chosen texts and select something to base our art piece on. All the students' outcomes were to be collectively exhibited around the walls of the studio in order of their date of origin, from which the title comes into play. However, since I never actively recorded any of this in terms of photography, what I can discuss is the subject I had been assigned, what information I selected from it and how I expressed it.

The text I was assigned with for this project brief was entitled Art: A Sex Book by John Waters and Bruce Hainley.

The book is a compilation of various works from artists that range from startling to graphic depictions of the human body and activities to more abstract images that can imply eroticism or at least something that seems unnerving. Among the collection of these works is a conversation between Waters and Hainley where they discuss the nature behind contemporary art and its provoking language and relationship with people. For my sketchbook I chose to highlight certain quotes from the book that I felt I could connect to in terms of their ideas on the nature of modern (provocative) art.

Contemporary art is rarely about making normal bodies.
- John Waters

Many designers' inspiration is haute recycling from the garbage.

- Bruce Hainley

 

Good art always brings up destruction, anarchy. Rebelling against - over turning - the old forms, the established regimes, that's the history of art.

- Waters & Hainley

 

The art world is a secret world with a secret language... People learn the language if they're interested enough.

- Waters

 

You see, we're laughing when we talk about contemporary art but we're laughing with it. What you have to do is be delighted by the nerve of contemporary art. You don't have contempt before investigation and yet contempt is what 98% of people have for contemporary art.

- Waters

 

People complain about certain images: 'Oh, it's pornographic, not art' and yet... we love to see certain things repeated over and over... There's something sexy about all that looking, but there's also something a little disturbing about it, pornographic. Contemporary art deals powerfully with the strangeness of looking at anything at all.

- Hainley

 

Among the shown pieces, one in particular I developed an interest in was a conceptual art piece by Tom Friedman, called 1000 Hours of Staring. This piece features a blank piece of paper which Friedman supposedly looked at for one thousand hours. Much like other conceptual works of Friedman's, this is about developing intrigue in a basic object by providing an unusual circumstance to its being.

 

1000 Hours of Staring (1992-1997) by Tom Friedman

 

Contemporary art requires some amount of trust. Did Tom Friedman really stare at a piece of paper for a thousand hours?

- Hainley

 

...That's one of my favourite pieces... What did he have on when he was staring? Was he nude? What was he thinking? If he has stared for a thousand hours he had to do some fantasising... There's confidence in paying for the result of his staring - it requires belief in what you're doing... Imaging him staring for all those hours: you're having a fantasy about his fantasy.

- Waters

Sketch of setup for projection response to 1000 Hours of Staring

 

What I aimed to produce in response to Friedman's 1000 Hours of Staring was a projection/audio installation piece. Contemplating on the possible occurrences throughout the 1000 hours looking into a piece of paper, I recorded the background noise from within my own room, and kept it at an ambient level so I could subtly loop the audio (for practicality reasons). Although it was certainly an entertaining notion for me to work on a more conceptual piece compared to what I've normally explored, in hindsight, I didn't feel greatly engaged with the work as a whole.