The Body

I know this week is supposed to be about ‘Body’ and one would think that the body is relevant to most practices that people are taking. However, it seems these presentations are instead a chance for all the professors’ to parade around, showing everyone their particular projects without considering its relevance or use to the group presentations at the end of the three-week period.

At the beginning of the presentation Stephanie even openly stated that she “does not do the body” at which point, I felt as though I wanted to just stand up and ask ‘why are you even bothering to do this presentation then?’. Half the time it feels like those presenting were asked just because those were the people free on the day, and in actual fact they have no understanding or knowledge about the actual topic being discussed on the day. Stephanie’s work specifically related to boobs in response to the Russell-Coates museum. It just seemed like a big photographic collection of all the boobs she had made or found boobs in things. Like a very Freud-related process. But she didn’t seem to explain why she had done this response. It seemed rather pointless as if she has just gone; ‘oh this looks like a boob, and I bet I could make that look like a boob, and if I do this it will look like a boob!’ There was no reasoning behind it, there was no ‘why’ it just didn’t feel like she was going anywhere, or knew why she was doing what she was doing. It was pretty unimpressive in that respect. As usual, there was no explanation as to how this relates to our particular practices. It was far too general – these things always seem to be far too general or far too specific to one particular practice – frankly the MA groups should be split so people can learn and respond to things that are actually relevant to their practices.

Lisa Richardson seemed to make her work try and be more ‘in your face’ making sure everyone was quite aware of why she made something. But it seemed even less-related to the body than Stephanie’s work. Certainly, Lisa made use of the body in her work, but that is the point, she used the body instead of talked about it. She was very aggressive in stating what her work symbolised, even though in most instances I felt as though what she was stating was not obvious or clear in her work. For example she stated her work was meant to connect with Victorian-inspired family paintings – which I felt was not evident in her work at all. Trying to be feminist, but at the same time trying to be like: I’M FEMANIST BUT I’M USING FEMANINE-RELATED THINGS! CAN YOU SEE THE IRONY?!!! It was quite annoying, and she seemed to try and press the issue onto the class. But as with the others, it again seemed irrelevant to our individual practices. Perhaps it will suit the fine artists and maybe a couple of the photographers who are dealing with a human form – but apart from that it felt irrelevant again, and I have no idea how this is going to help any of us with our group presentations unless we decide to prance around outside with placenta’s on our heads.

Feminist art seems to be an underlying theme between both aspects. I don’t think either Stephanie or Lisa realised this, which is pretty frustrating – though Lisa pretty much states that hers is feminist art, her defence supports her feminist theory.

Dave Hazel can introduce a presentation in a good kind of way! Huzzah! A presentation which makes me want to sit up and pay some attention! ‘Art, death and photography’. I even wrote notes!:

• ·         Quantum entanglement – a belief that there is an energy that surrounds the body for another half an hour or so to create a weird look surrounding the corpse. Has apparently been photographed.
• ·         Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (by Mary Roach) weighing of the soul, book. Check out amazon.com!
• ·         ‘Every photograph of a human being is an image of the dead or those who will die’ Roland Barthes.
• ·         We are not exposed to death anymore. It is sanitised. Why is that…?
• ·         Death is inevitable but frequently avoided by image-makers. The ‘final’ photograph is no longer prevalent in family albums. Her photographs, in addition to being evidence of the human condition, are aesthetically pleasing allowing the viewer to linger and reflect without feeling uneasy. Maeve Berry explores this visual void, demystifying and stripping back all material trappings – bones laid bare to reveal beauty in the thing that we fear the most.’ Diemar/Noble PHOTOGRAPHY
• ·         Www.paulfrecker.com – Victorian death photography: “a means of capturing the image of the person in one last futile gesture that denies their loss whilst at the same time admitting it totally.”
• ·         Joel Peter Witkin – Drivers from the morgue make runs everyday in white trucks to pick up the dead. When found, the bodies are just thrown on the gurneys, face down. Their noses get broken. The trucks are loaded with maybe sic people, and they just lie on top of each other, somewhat bloated. They’re all stretched out. Their identities are taken, their clothes are taken away, and records are kept. When I stayed those extra days in Mexico, I knew something was going to happen. I got a call. Four men were picked up, the last run, on the last day before I was going to leave…’
• ·         Joel Peter Witkin ‘Feast of Fools’
• ·         “The organisation and  experience of death have become increasingly privatised” Chris Shilling
• ·         Julia Kristeva, ‘Powers of Horror’ – “The primary example for what causes such a reaction is the corpse (which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality); however, other items can elicit the same reaction: the open wound, shit, sewage, even the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk.”
• ·         Chris Townsend. Art and Death (I.B.Tauris, 2008), Modernism and Death: The Body, The Spectre and Modernity (University of Leuven Press, 2011).
• ·         Henry Peach Robinson – ‘Fading Away 1858’. Staged photograph of death.

He managed to talk to people and make a bit more of a discussion instead of talking directly to us; he got people to add their own points and information on certain matters, as well as their own thoughts – THIS IS HOW YOU DO A PROPER PRESENTATION TO THE GROUP! WHY CAN’T ANYONE ELSE DO THIS? He was very interesting, discussing how it made him feel as well as other people, not stressing his own opinions on it but instead asking other people how they felt on the matter. He would show photographs that felt a little more relevant and discussed the subject matter in an interesting way that made people want to pay attention. He did not use his own project, but instead his interest in the matter of death, photography and art.

I really enjoyed the final part based on the idea of ‘the body’ and death. Mostly because I find the concept of death very interesting. My GCSE art topic was based on ‘beneath the surface’, while other people focused their work on plants and things underground, I instead looked at things beneath the surface of the body, such as the inside of deer carcasses, chicken carcasses, etc. Perhaps I might add some information about death in my work… I need to have a good think and see if there is a connection I can work with.