Anxiety of influence..

I had so much anxiety with the artist that I chose, which is the primary reason for choosing him. Banks Violette on the one hand speaks to me in relation to subculture influences but irritates me in the same way. I would say that it is a love/ hate relationship, where I both love what he’s showing and talking about and then the next minute hate him for all the same reason. After I chose to talk about him, it occurred to me that I would be placed into this box that the artist places himself in; this box of a flat persona of only one interest. That's the reason that I wanted to include a second influence. At first look at his work, I thought that it was great and was able to unify two interests that I have. But with time and research I started to hate his work. I went back and forth on whether it was exploitative of a subculture. I started to see that he wasn't expanding on the ideas that he was putting forth, but went back and forth whether or not that is a problem. I like that he states both a enthusiasm for the music but then shows the problems that inherently lie within something so powerful as a type of music. Plus a key factor to the validity in my mind is that the bands that he is referencing and collaborating with were legitimately interested in the music and not fame or fortune. But then it’s strange because his work doesn’t seem to hold the same sincerity that the bands that he is referencing hold.
I believe with time, even the slightest amount of time, we start to question the validity of the thing that influence, and why and how it influences us. I suppose this was stated in the class discussion but I wanted to restate it for record purposes. More so than Banks Violette, my involvement in the subculture that he is speaking about is the true anxiety of influence. I find him interesting because he discovered a way to address the mass subculture. I also love/hate the punk/metal subculture, because it is both exclusionary and inclusive. Its exclusionary in the idea that a person validity comes from how involved in the subculture they are, thus flattening them into that same idea that is then reiterated over and over through different people. I suppose this is pretty common knowledge, the play between choosing something as identity causes loss of true identity. But then is there ever true identity and is the personal way that we identify ourselves the same as the persona that we express? Stated another way, is our independent personal identity really a dynamic illusion that we create and then believe to be true identity when we’re having an introspective moment? Most of the time I believe myself to be nothing but the influences that I have had and the genetics that I was given. These things develop personality but they don’t develop identity. So maybe it is wrong to state cultural influences or subculture as identity, when it’s more of a chosen personality trait.
On the other hand, I truly love the subculture because I get to meet so many people in an uninhibited manner with a unifying topic of discussion. I have had the pleasure to meet people from all over the world like Japan and Italy because of certain shows that I have gone to. Even when there is a language barrier, there is still this unity of interest and influence. It reminds me of going to art exhibitions where the same thing occurs, but it is much more restrictive in a way. Banks Violette speaking about the analogues relationship of the art world and the punk/metal subculture is the main reason his thought influences mine. The anthropological breakdown of formulating small groups of people and thus attaching ourselves to attributes that are involved with it is so incredibly interesting to me. For many years I didn't want to attach myself to the subculture and many of my friends would call me the hippie at the punk show. (That’s a little besides the point but it just occurred to me, and it’s something I haven't thought about in a long while.) I believe that everyone attaches themselves to cultural and subculture personality traits as a way a formulating relationships with people, understanding other people, and understanding oneself. Some traits are subtler than other. (We talked about this in class to so sorry for the reiteration) It makes me think of the emergence radiolab that we listened to. How mutual interests formulate groups and within these groups, how one persons thought, attire, personality traits can lead that group in one direction or another so the group becomes a singular entity with one identity.
This presentation presented another anxiety that was interesting to have to deal with. I find myself to be a terrible public speaker, and the anxiety that I feel around Banks Violettes work is a tricky thing to state when public communication is difficult. This aspect of my personality has been present from a young age and a way in which I identify myself. This anxiety of influence intersected really well with the identity project that we are doing. Although, all of this introspective thinking is making my head spin, and my egos in a very strange spot.



Hey All,

I wanted to just clarify the assignment for next Tuesday. I want you all to make a powerpoint or keynote presentation on the artist whose work has most influenced your own. I would like you to focus on a select number of works and consider the following:

Where/how/when you learned about this artist?

I learned about Banks Violette from looking at Galleries online sometime over the summer. I came across “Hate Them” and was blown away. It effectively shows this strange relationship to the stages of music venues and the actions and sentiments of the artist’s that play on the stages and the audience that participates. I had been thinking a lot about the presence that a stage or a staging of something has and also how that stage works as a documentation of events past.

What it was about this artist or a particular work of theirs that particularly appealed to you? Piece

Banks Violette’s work appeals to me because it discusses issues surrounding punk and metal subculture in relation to the greater whole of contemporary culture. He uses metal iconography and symbols as a proxy to discuss societal issues of repression of self-expression, mediated and removed violence, and the blurry line between morality and immorality. Violette’s work also shows the placement of this particular subculture within the lines of post modernism. Violette appropriates symbols and imagery from youth and subculture simultaneously celebrating their sentiment and showing the degenerating problem with the recycling of the same imagery.

His work also appeals to me because it plays with ideas of what is powerful, influential, and beautiful. His work is incredibly visually appealing while implying scenes of violence and morbidity, causing the viewer to be attracted to aforementioned scenes. In this way Violette shows the commonality between the “well adjusted” viewer and the delusional committers of these acts of violence.

Lastly, Violette’s work appeals to me because the materials that he uses correlate with topics he’s bringing to discussion. For example the salt that he uses has personal correspondence to the work. Red Cross Salt, has an iron cross which is iconography associated with metal subculture. Also when he was young, he used to get high in a abandoned salt mine which was the same salt mine that Robert Smithson used to create his first salt sculpture in New York. Smithson is a major influence to Violette.

What specific works of theirs have you seen in person and which ones have you only seen in 2d mediated contexts (online, magazines, etc)?

I have not had the chance to see any of his works in person unfortunately, mostly due to the fact that I learned about him so recently.

Why the artist was being shown to you in the various contexts you have been exposed to them?

No one has ever shown his work to me. I don’t believe that my work directly resembles his work in many ways, mainly because a lot of my previous work was very careful to not incorporate any of the subculture experiences that I’ve had. I generally always viewed my efforts at visual arts as disconnected from my musical taste, because it is so difficult to incorporate into visual arts without seeming like fan art, teenage angst art, or abiding by a certain set of aesthetic that exists in subculture. Working subculture into good artwork is extremely difficult.

What aspects of their work/thought/persona you have brought into your own?
His thoughts of staging as a documentary state I have incorporated into my own ideas of staging and framing. The elaborated idea of site non-site that Robert Smithson proposed has allowed for greater investigation within my painting works and caused issues with the last work that I did. The idea of morbidity as a way of showing the sublime has been working its way into my painting work as well but in a very abstract way. The idea of resurrecting a dead, meaningless imagery as a way of critiquing it was very present in “Home sweet home” in fact Violette used a black and white flag in one of his shows, it was graphite on paper and mounted to aluminum. It sat tilted against the wall. However, he is not the only person to use a black and white flag, there’s a guy in Illinois that painted it across a building. The commonality was the effort of reviving the symbol to show the change in the dead meaning.

What aspects of their work/thought/persona have you resisted, rejected, or tried to move away from?

The direct appropriation of symbols and imagery from subculture.
The unbiased nature in relation to consequence of powerful subculture influence. The consequences may be proof positive of the influential nature of the subculture but it is also the downfall. Really I still reject bring subculture into artwork because of the how difficult it is. The work inevitably ends up talking to only that subculture.
I would say that I reject a lot of the surface ideas that he’s dealing with, but value a lot of his underlying thought.


How has your relationship to this artist's work changed since you were first introduced to them?

It has changed a lot with further research and understanding.

Recent Sculpture Piece ("Home Sweet Home")

“Home Sweet Home” (Originally “This Country Tis of Thee”)

A handmade wooden machine that lays down American flags in sugar, with white and graphite-colored black sugar.

This work spawned from placing chalk ground on the floor from the last piece that I did. I enjoyed the temporary and easily destructible nature of the chalk. I began researching Kolam or Ragoli drawings, sometimes referred to as mandala sand drawings, to a greater depth. I enjoy the idea of the meditative action of drawing being as important as the final drawing, and the idea that the drawing stood for a symbol of mortality. The temporality of the drawing shows the temporality of life. I also like this type of drawing in because it does not try to fight entropy, but rather welcomes it as natural aspects of life.
Last semester I had been working with sugar as a symbol for American society and history, so when I started thinking of what exactly I wanted to do with this reference of Kolam drawings, I thought of using sugar instead of sand or rice flour. For some strange reason sugar is one of the most symbolic substances that exists in my mind. In working with it as a symbol for the past year, I now realize that it is very dull to everyone else in the world and I should stop using it. The connections that I see in the substance are either not viewed in the same way by anyone else or are just overwhelming obvious and unexciting. I find sugar to show a strange timeline woven into American history. It begins with Columbus, had a large effect on the victory of the Revolutionary War, continues into the slave trade, feeds ideas of outsourcing labor and resources, lead a huge shift into the processing of food, and helped Americans gain the reputation of “fat and happy” thus representing gluttony. There is something so important about the irony in the sweetness of taste and bitterness of exploitative governmental practices that surrounds sugar and it’s processing. Furthermore, the idea of artificial sweeteners seems so post-modern and contemporarily American. We don’t need real sugar anymore, lets just make something that resembles sugar, something artificial.
I knew I wanted to use sugar and wanted to work with an ephemeral drawing on the ground. I worked with what substances I could use to dye the sugar. In researching the Kolam drawings, the monks and housewives usually use pigment to color sand and rice flour. I started with charcoal and chalk to color the sugar. These worked okay but their colors were very pale and washed-out. Then I tried graphite powder and it worked splendidly. I began to think of exactly what drawing I wanted to do. I wanted to do something referential of American society and my place within it. My first thoughts were of bad pornography or a McDonalds, neither of these conveyed the correct meaning at all when drawn with the sugar. I thought of a self-portrait, but realized that would internalize the work. Then I thought of the American flag as a symbol for America, completely baseline and simple. I had reservations because this was very linear in thought and the American flag carries very little meaning to me. I thought of times when I was a really young and burning the flag because that’s what my friends and I saw on music videos on MTV. I realized the meaning that it does carry to me is the idea of something to revolt against when showing dismay at the government and American society. It’s meaning is strangely re-ignited when it is being destroyed. After this thought strand, I was excited about the flag. It fit in perfectly as a symbol to show my disillusionment. I believed others would be excited by this work because they would be able to walk on the flag and ride over it. I believed it would be a fun interactive way of playing around with current state of national pride. I always imagined it would be somewhere public, where I would stay up all night drawing the flag in the traditional Kolam way. I started to imagine the possibility of this being really large, and thought how formally beautiful it would be if it spanned across Broad Street. I thought of putting it other places but I didn’t want it to exist only as a video or as pictures for the class. Existing in this way would be so removed and offset from the experience, that it would kill the idea.
However, putting it across Broad St. was dangerous because of legalities. That’s when the idea of making a machine to lay down the flag came into play. The advantage of the machine would be of quickness. But the making of a machine creates limitations in size. The machine functioned a lot like a silk-screen, where the sugar was strained through cuts in containers holding the sugar, and pull along a track as the sugar fell to the ground. The machine had way more problems than I anticipated, like all machines. The machines print was lackluster in comparison to my practices with Kolam style drawing with the sugar. The actual machine was quite interesting though. Creating something that was action based was new and challenging. The machine also had the advantage of image replication.
On the other hand, from an outsider’s point of view that didn’t know the back history of this piece, the idea of building a really crazy, bulky contraption to print the American flag is kind of convolutedly interesting. The machine becomes the important aspect, where machinery exists that only performs this one seemingly useless function. Sort of like building machines that butter your morning toast or tie your shoes. The idea of machines as ideally faster, timesaving, and useful, when in actuality they are full of glitches. Machines also shape the way the product looks, just like a print is just as important as the type of printer/ printing technique.
In the class critique of the machine and the flag product, many of my ideas were not conveyed. It was in the critique room, which is like a traditional gallery space with four white-walls. Being in this space, the audience knows there is a no touching policy due to artwork fragility. The flag then became this fragile crappy drawn image in sugar, that no one would consider walking on. It probably didn’t help that I was simultaneously trying to show the machine, which acted like a fence keeping people away from the sugar drawing. I could have made a sign or something showing people they could walk on it, but somehow in all the transitional points of this piece it didn’t occur to me. By the end, I didn’t know what was the important thing to show, the machine that had become a very important part of the final work, or the dwarfed pathetic version of my original idea of a drawing.
Sometimes works just don’t come together like one would hope. It could be all for the best. The general consensus was that a black and white flag in sugar on the ground is just uninteresting. I was thinking that it would be interesting to the mass populous by exciting thoughts of lost patriotism. But if everyone in the class already realized and doesn’t care about this paradigm shift of being able to trust ones government, than it is unjust for me to consider the mass populous as naïve and somehow affected by this. I suppose this shift in the favoring of the government has been massively happening since Reagan, but with the failure of Obama it seem ever present as problematic. I feel like there is a trickling down effect to have a distaste and distrust for the government. There is distrust of companies and businesses, a distrust of organized groups, and a distrust of strangers. Every person is becoming more and more of an island.

Sorry that this is so ramblingly long. This is kind of why I didn’t want to write about it. It’s a lot of thought for bad art.

Janine Antoni Lecture

This lecture was one of the best lectures I have gone to. Antoni was calm, humble, and engaging. The descriptions of her work were very sincere. I liked that she stated the critics viewpoint on "Gnaw" and then she stated how she felt about the work. This highlighted the arrogance of the critics, but it also showed how a work of art can be read in many different ways. She exhibited pride in her work without being arrogant. I liked that she talked about meeting audiences from other countries and social interactions that she has as an artist. In the description of many of her works, she mentioned how it didn't go exactly according to plan but that the end result was positive. As a artist, it was really nice to hear this because sometimes I have the delusion that truly successful artist don't struggle with thing going awry in their work. The dedication that she puts into her work was inspiring, for example learning to tightrope walk for only a couple of her pieces, or physically grinding down to boulders for hours a day. She is an inspirational person with a clear message of the body in relation to art.

Video #2

This is my second video. Not overwhelmingly successful but still very interesting to do. I believe one of the hardest parts about a video is keeping someones attention for the entirety of the video. I found myself trying to make the video visually pleasing based to the video work I have seen before. The contextual meaning behind it was lost in trying to make it pleasing enough to keep the attention of the viewer.

http://www.vimeo.com/16170528

Peer Review

Morgan’s piece about condensing one hour into 7 minutes was very interesting. At first glanced it appeared to be only about the summation of an hour into 7 minutes. But then on reflection, I realized that it shows a lot more about the retentions ability of the mind. Because she was using the basis of general biology, something that I have a background in, I was able to compare and contrast my retention of the information with her retention. It was interesting to her the connections that her mind made and the ways that she remembers the connection of the information. It also spoke about pedagogy and different ways that she was taught to retain this information. For example, remember certain phrases, like catch phrases, to remember important aspects. I remember being taught hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties of cell membranes by my professor making a joke about being hydrophobic. This is a connection that exists in my brain and maybe a few other students alone, but does not exist to Morgan. Her piece further talked about pedagogy, because to show her retention of information in an hour, she mimicked the actions of a teacher, and for a brief minute became a teacher of information. This showed a passing down of not only information but of pedagogical styles and traits as well.