Sculpture discussion group autumn 2010.
Sculpture in a tightening spot?
The belief in the rationale of the concept is the mainstream sensitivity in the visual arts. It is a leftover from last century and its effect is most often poor concepts limited to their own presentation and a fragmented sensibility, much like the overall culture that it is part of.
Sculpture is a kind of art object. An object may be a kind of sculpture. The first conceptual artists referred to their work as sculpture and the precursors of conceptual art were objects more than images. If we talk of sculpture we are within this. In a rigorous sense sculpture is the subtraction of significant form out of a surplus of neutral uniform matter, as in primeval sculpture and very much so in the very advanced instance of Michelangelos´s sculpting. (This is the opposite to what in the German language is called plastik, which is about adding separate parts into a whole). It is further on some thing to be looked at from more angles in a space, i.e. you can walk around it yourself or turn the thing around. It is to be appreciated in its sensual appearance, traditionally being its very raison de étre; the sensual or spiritual body become frozen objekt in space. This kind of art is somehow quite redundant – which is perhaps why sculpture seems to be in a difficult position. As today material in general has changed from being a given uniform substrate for something different to be made out of, it has now become a composite cultural residue, by concept. It is equally marked by its former use, or virginal absence of such, so that when you make something out of something, you are in a complex of possible significations already and well before you even start doing it. The neutrality of matter has disappeared, if it ever really existed. But subtraction is still taking place. There still seem to be something less, in distinct form, coming out of something substantially more. There is an overall grammar of truth relating to art provided by Alain Badiou that is based on the procedure of subtraction which is a valid set of ideas to look at. Amongst other things we will do that.
By the overall emphasis on the conceptual within art, the concept of object covers potentially all things liminal, formally speaking. This is the present-day post-conceptual practice. It can be anything and this has for quite some time been the situation. In the museum the fire hose and the snow shovel appearing in the same room are on one level the same, but is distinguished as very different on another. One is hanging on the wall in case of fire and the other is placed there precisely not in case of sudden snowfall. This distinction is subject to one of the main dramas of the anesthesia of last century´s art and it became an issue more than a hundred years ago. It is very old. In the beginning it was about the opening of the space between the appearance of something (displaced) and the conceptualization of its context, which in effect implied that the reception became the actual making of the work itself. Now it has become the never ending reshuffling of these binary elements as pure re-displacement inside the very same space they come from – the split between concept and appearance as the prevalent object of cultural production. A reshuffling of things or part of things that already exist, into yet another place they didn´t belong. The always already wasted ideas embedded in the material support of this space is as uniform as in the primeval sculpture and yet it is bereft of significant potential beyond the maintenance of its own space as becoming split, as it has become the material reproduction of itself as space/machine/object. From providing a historical split between one way of looking at art and another, it has been brought away by the same history into the uniform matter of history itself. It is Hegelian aufhebung, it has moved from materialization of idea into solid form. It has become an art that is bringing together in symbol the maintenance of the split as such - the cultural folklore of late capitalism - the very bedrock of the global circumstance. We leave it at that.
Being caught in this; perhaps in this discussion group we are interested in phrasing the question of making, which itself is a machine, like in: what is a singular physical density to be brought out of some kind of space, where from something potentially can emerge - as some other body - some other object/machine, that is made. We will not focus on process or structure as forms. We will look at this thing pointed at by the verb making, as the impure concept it is and we are interested in its actual placement, as in where is the making starting and when is it finished, and where exactly does what the artist do, exist. What are the components that define the procedure. In what sequence of order is the procedure ordered. Does it have an end as in finitude, distinction, objective within itself as in a truth of itself. Or is it something that is for something, bound to the function of signification of and for something else, serving some other power than its own reason for becoming. Is it on some assignment? This is of significance regarding how one becomes part of the procedure of this becoming of something and it is distinct in defining its agents, amongst which in the becoming of art, one is the artist. Part of the discussion can be the role of the artist, that according to Boris Groys and others, last century lost autonomy and became just another alienated worker, within the cultural industry. Things like that discussed in relation to what we do, in this kind of institution, every day, in a studio, to help something emerge from somewhere. Or perhaps we have to rephrase all of the above.
The sculpture discussion group will take place on the following Fridays:
September 10, 17 and 24. In the auditorium 4th floor.
October 15 and 22. In Sunnivas studio 6th floor.
November 5, 19, and 26. In the auditorium 4th floor.
We start at 10 and keep it going until lunch. The time frame can be changed as we go along.
Some times it will be run by Stein Rønning and sometimes it will be run by Matthew L. Galpin and sometimes we do it together. We will very much as a group decide what to do. The course is of relevance to anybody we think, but perhaps especially for those engaged in the making of objects.
There is a link between this group and the workshop To Make V which also have been changed. See description To Make V
Arbeidsform:
Seminar, lectures, group tutorials, presentations.
Krav til forkunnskaper:
Opptak KHIB.
Kurset starter 11.09.2010 / Uke 36, og varer til 26.11.2010 / Uke 47
Sted: Auditoriet
Tilbyder: Akademiet
MÃ¥lgruppe: Akademiet
MA Kunst
Alle studenter
Årstrinn: Alle årstrinn
Antall plasser: 15
Faglig stab: