19 May 2009

Assignment 4 - Review of Zach Hill

You know those terrific nightmares you had as a child, where there's a thousand over-bearing shadowy monsters hounding you and you wake up gasping for breath and sweating with panic feeling distinctly like your synapses have melted and your skull and brain muscles are simultaneously caving in? It's a pretty similar feeling to that on exiting the solo show of the Hella & Team Sleep drummer, Zach Hill. Billed as a warm-up for his appearance at The Breeders-curated ATP at Minehead last weekend, with support from Vice Magazine's favourite baby Mike Bones, I had to expect this gig to make me suffer. But it's a suffering infused with delirious and unbelieving happiness; I can only imagine it's akin to being horrendously consumed by a lion- painful and hard to understand but exciting to be that close to a rare breed, knowing there are so few alive in the world.

I keep seeing Mike Bones' skinny, semi-naked body in Vice. Apparently he's toured with Cass McCombs, who displays an intelligent blend of nostalgic art-rock, ethereal noises and indie-folk. Bones however peddles some lack-lustre Libertines-style drugs ballads which sounded so dull I stayed in the bar.

Hill had already started when we went through to The Croft's tiny back room. There were about 70 people in there, mainly guys wearing black hoodies and the odd girlfriend. Instantly Hill's snare sound hits you in the ear drum: the skin is stretched so tight you imagine each time he slams a stick on it a whip cracks inside your head. He's such a hard hitter he has broken his kit mid-set, and it's easy to see how. If This Will Destroy You & their post-rock ilk create a wall of noise, Hill manufactures a sonic barbed-wire fence adorned with broken glass and nails.

Physically, Hill was a frenetic sweaty blur for the majority of his 50 minute set. The noise and speed with which he executes his playing sucks you in to the extent that you don't notice until halfway through that there's some guy with a guitar and a laptop sitting to his right, making electronic notes barely audible above the battlefield drum racket. You listen to the kick drum; you assume he's using a double kick pedal. When you see he has no such thing you are therefore so amazed that you watch his ludicrously speedy & heavy right foot, unwavering, for ten minutes. Then you notice the near-destroyed crash cymbal and realise that the bizarre muffled and clanking noise that's been hovering on the edge of your throbbing hearing has been Hill battering that thing like his mother's life depended upon it.

Any attempt to discover a hidden rhythm or pattern in the percussive onslaught is denied. The set doesn't seem to even contain definable tracks. But you don't care. You aurally thrash around in the waves of noise for nearly an hour and when he's finished, leave with dissolved cochleas and a massive grin smeared across your face.




myspace.com/littlemikebones

myspace.com/zachhillmusic

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Really enjoyed writing this review. I knew I wanted to do a review of something musical, rather than fine art-y, since throughout this module that's what the main focus has been on, despite the tutors constant reminders to think outside our own field. Music was a fascination before art was; however I am aware that I am not half as good a musician as I am an artist (that is not to say I think I am an amazing artist: quite the opposite). I have real difficulty being original in music. I am not sure how much my formal education in the two areas have affected my outputs: I had piano lessons from the age of 5 until 19, as well as 8 years on the oboe plus short stints of lessons on the flute, recorder, guitar and vocals. My art training has formally been from about age 14, through GCSE & A-Level, Art Foundation, BA and it's now continuing with my MA. All my boyfriends have been musical and I find it hard to be close friends with someone if they don't really care about music: it's what I want to talk about the most. Anyways.

Lecture 14th May - 'Research funding is a schizophrenic animal'

Prof. Tom Abba
First half given by Tom Abba in leiu of the Dean, Paul Gough, but with Gough's notes.

About Assignment 5:

Ambitions, 10 year plan, funding proposal, almost anything. I think I want to investigate the measure the communities' secretary Hazel Blears is hoping to put through in June: making funding available to use 'slack space'- empty shops etc- as art galleries, community centres and the like. My area of town, St. George, or more specifically, Redfield, has no art and is quite rundown is places. My intention is to treat this assignment as a practise for applying for this funding. I will discuss this with my tutors this coming Thursday in a tutorial. See Guardian article. Other ideas suggested to my by colleagues is putting on shows at the bookable spaces The Cube and the Hen & Chicken. Walked past the exhibition 'Weapon of Choice' the other day- must try to see this.

  1. Idea/questions/where is the work going? New questions, new challenges
  2. Unpick question - why - what - where - whom - how? Doability? Plain language --> unambiguous
  3. How - methods & methodology. Ways to assess success and maybe change. How will you work? describe work in art language
  4. What else is going on? Setting th critical context. How well do you understand the rest of the field, ie, is someone else doing it? Situate within peers
  5. Who else is doing this?
  6. How well informed are you? Regional/national discussion. Links, networks. Bibliography of work written. How well can you command on the subject?
  7. What will be the result? Outcomes and outputs?
  8. Assessment- is it worth doing?

Arts & Humanities Research Council website

Bibliographies can include film content, web journals. Referenced throughout text.

Dr. Holly McLaren
Cultural geographer, site-specific artwork. Invited artists to respond to the locality of the town of Oswestry on the England/Wales border; exhibition entitled 'Bordering'.

Production process as action research - network of associations - Vivian van Saaze - Ethnography of Installation Art. Connective threads between geography and art. Rearticulate geography in an explicitly artistic manner. Role of geographer/curator allowed flexibility of roles. Kept a research diary, conducted interviews, methodology.

Points- physical border landscape, emotional cartographies, transitory places, liminal spaces, ambiguous places, landscapes of identity.

Two grants- smaller first to investigate if worth it and then larger delivery grant.

Ruth Jones - Ianuae - horses' significance in Oswestry - performance piece with black & white horse.
Simon Whitehead & Stefhan Caddick - Walking Wall - created a mobile border/barrier. Initially in gallery then walked around
TEA - TEA in Oswestry - two videos, installation & postcards and bags. How to engage in place when only there briefly, marketed tourism.

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Tom's talk was very helpful and I think will prove invaluable. McLaren's lecture, whilst interesting to begin with, became less interesting I think more because of her delivery than anything else. That is a lesson learnt: don't read off pre-written notes and try to vary your tone of voice. Also I thought the artworks in her exhibition seemed somewhat weak and obvious (Whitehead & Caddick and TEA) or pretentiously obscure (Ruth Jones). Although I liked the initial idea I found my mind wandered towards the end.

14 May 2009

Assignment 3 - first presentations

I missed the second week because I was at the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film.

Fiona
Human behaviour | signposts to survival | complex subjects | spiritual tone | work on emotion and intellect
Her studied piece was Steve McQueen's feature film 'Hunger' on hunger strikes at Belfast Prison. McQueen startes "sensory
detail brings you closer to the emotional"(NY Times Article).

Sue
Landscape | journeys | photography | found objects | book formats
Studied
Birgit Skiƶld, printmaker who creates subtle pieces that include some colour and embossing or debossing.

Maia
Movement & force | humour | revealing metaphysical world through everyday







Fischli & Weiss video 30minute of a lot of different materials and elements all reacting with one another to cause a domino effect. Must be the inspiration for the
Honda advert. Unlike everyone else she also showed a photograph of a piece of her own work- a golf ball apparently keeping a heavy hotel door open, and talked about her previous work which was documented in which she attempts to become an amateur astronaut.

Jo
Decorative | humorous | informative | narrative | passionate

Hers was on Spike Milligan. I didn't know much about him really, except that my Dad has his signature on a note, but it was very interesting. Provoked a discussion on mental illness and art.

Mine

I chose to do mine on Tessa Farmer. You can see the presentation in PDF format here (it wouldn't let me upload it as a .ppt, thinks it's corrupted- blame OpenOffice) and read the notes here. I only discovered this artist the day before so the presentation but thought she had so much in common with my work I really wanted to do my presentation on her. I hadn't actually decided on what my five criteria were at the time I did this presentation, but here they are now:

Miniaturism | narrative | organic/growth | fantasy | creepiness

I found this a very useful exercise. I found out things about my own work I had not yet pinned down, plus discovered new artists on my own and from others.

Chris suggested I look at the work of the Polish/Russian animator Vladislav Starevich which us very relevent to my work as he animated insects. Maia suggested David Altmejd (left) who makes sometimes grotesque and sometimes magical sculptures of decaying/crystallising figures like werewolves and birdmen.